Recently, as I was listening to a song by James Blunt, I found myself starting to cry. Now this will come as no surprise to those who are less than appreciative of the creative efforts of the one time captain in the British Army – such folk will no doubt see my distress as nothing more than the inevitable consequence of experiencing the work of aforementioned musician. Even so, the reason I was reduced to tears had nothing to do with the artistic merit, or lack thereof, of what it was I was hearing.
The particular song in question was ‘Monsters’. In it Blunt sings of how his father had once chased away the monsters that had existed in his son’s life, and of how he needn’t be afraid now that he is seemingly drawing near to the end of his life. The reason given for this is that Blunt junior has now taken on the responsibility of chasing away the monsters that appear to still prowl the environs of Blunt senior’s remaining years.
So why the moist eyes?
I think, in part, they began to spill over on account of the fact that my own dear father is now 89 years old and, though he remains reasonably fit and well, he is, both inevitably and regrettably gradually drawing ever closer to his own death.
As indeed are we all. For as is the case with my Dad, so it is for you and me. Just now, our time has not yet gone – but the day is surely coming when it will have.
But more specifically, my sadness reflected a realisation that, despite being a genuinely great Dad who has, over the years, lessened a great many of the fears I have myself experienced, he has, of course, been no more successful in chasing away all the monsters in my life as I myself have been successful in chasing away all those that have inhabited the lives of my own children and those of others whom I have loved or cared for, both inside and outside of work.
Life is at times a scary business and, as a doctor perhaps, I see more of those things that lurk in the shadows than some others. The world is full of protracted dementia and premature death, it’s full of cancer and coronavirus, pain and paralysis, sickness and sorrow. It is, on occasions, a confusing and confounding place, both wild and unpredictable. Whilst, for a time, we may be able to cage some of the monsters we encounter, as with those great creatures of old, the Behemoth and Leviathan, we can never tame them fully. That is as true today and it surely will be tomorrow.
Perhaps, in part, that’s the point of monsters. Perhaps we are meant to be terrified by these fearful creatures, at least for as long as it takes for us to appreciate that it will always be beyond our ability to domesticate them and thus, render as harmless, that which threatens us most. (See Job Chapters 40 and 41). Only then will we come to realise that our only hope lies, not in ourselves, but in the one who created what terrifies us, in the one who, as their creator, stands high above each of those dreadful dangers and who, more terrifying perhaps than they are themselves, sovereignly controls and constrains them such that their sphere of influence extends only as far as he decrees.
Constrained by our limited minds, there is, of course, an unfathomable mystery to God that we will never completely understand, an infinite depth to his being that we will never fully plumb. But by faith we know that this fear inducing deity, is also a God of love. As C.S. Lewis helpfully reminds us, God is not safe, but he is good. In the book that bears his name, Job, in his anguish at the devastating loss he has experienced, pours out his complaint to God. And when it is eventually answered, it is out of the whirlwind that God graciously speaks. [Job 38.1].
Whatever our current circumstances, however incomprehensible we may be finding what is happening to us today, God has promised that he will ultimately restore the fortunes of his children just as he restored Job’s. And when he does, it will be as a result of his loving kindness and his infinite goodness. Though he may, in his mercy, first have cause to humble us, an experience which we may find to be deeply painful, having done so he will vindicate us, accepting us as righteous on account of the perfect life lived by Jesus.
And in the end, he will richly bless us, a consequence of who he is by nature – that is a compassionate God who invites us to take refuge in him. Then, just as those who, sheltering in a crevice of a rock can marvel at the frightening force of the storm, so we, safe in Christ, will be able to marvel at the fearful awesomeness of who God really is.
So who will protect you from the hooded claw, who will keep the vampires from your door? Surely only the one who is sovereign over all that is evil – surely only the one who, though God, paradoxically ‘emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and, being found in human form, humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.’ [Philippians 2:7-8]
This is the power of love, the power of that perfect love shown by the perfect God who is love. His is a love that chooses to suffer, a love that chooses to lay down it’s life, and a love that, in so doing, subverts evil, disarms it of its power, and defeats death itself.
My father may not have been able to chase away all the monsters in my life but he has pointed me to the one who can, a father who is greater than either of us could ever be. God is the only perfect father, one whose son I am glad to be. And he is the one to whom I seek to point others, including my own children, because, since his is the only perfect love, and since ‘perfect love casts out fear’ [1 John 4:18], he alone is the one who can deal with all that frightens them, all that frightens me and all that frightens those I love and care for.
Contrary to that which is suggested by the lyrics of James Blunt’s song, there is, though, a need for forgiveness. But the good news is that, on account of Christ’s death in our place, our faultless Heavenly Father, who does indeed know all our mistakes, lovingly offers that forgiveness to all who will receive it. If then, when our time is gone, we know his forgiveness, and if, as we close our eyes in sleep for that final time, we hear someone gently whisper ‘Don’t be afraid’, we will know, even then, that there really is nothing that we need fear.
For then, the monsters really will have all been chased away…forever.
Related post:
To read ‘At Halloween – O death where is your victory?’, click here
To read ‘On the fallen and the felled’, click here
For those who may not be familiar with the song ‘Monsters’ you can hear it here. You can say what you like, I think it’s all right!
Recently I read the book of Philippians. I was particularly struck by Chapter 3 v 10 where Paul writes of how his desire is
‘that [he] may know [Christ] and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death’
It was challenging for me to read of how Paul wants to become like Jesus in his death. I don’t know about you but I have, over the years, found it easy to say how I want to be like Jesus. But when I have, I have always meant it in the sense of wanting to be like him in his moral perfection. I have never thought of it in terms of wanting to be like him in his death. Even so, that is what I am called to be.
As a result of reading Christopher Ash’s superb commentary on Job, I have been pondering of late the issue of suffering. God is sovereign over all things, but if God is sovereign, the question that is often asked is why does he allow bad things to happen to good people? Given that the Bible tells us that there is no one who is truly good [Romans 3:10-12], a better question might be, ‘Why does God allow bad things to happen to his people, to those whose sin is forgiven and are counted righteous and who, in that sense at least, suffer undeservedly?
God’s ways are frequently shrouded in mystery and so we may never fully know the reasons behind his actions. Nonetheless, without simplistically suggesting that it is the whole answer to the question, one reason why bad things sometimes happen to good people might be so that good things can happen to bad people.
We live in a world where grace and redemptive suffering go hand in hand. The very bad thing that happened to Jesus on the cross opened the door to a very good thing happening to us – the forgiveness of our sins, our adoption into God’s family and the assurance of eternal life with God. Without Christ’s redemptive suffering on our behalf, there would be no grace.
When as Christians we continue to suffer it is never as a punishment for our sins. Since all our sin was dealt with on the cross when Jesus bore there the punishment we deserved, there is now no punishment left for us to endure. The price has been fully paid, there is therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. [Romans 8:1]
Even so there is much that we need to learn if we are to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus. And so the Lord lovingly disciplines those he loves just as a Father disciplines his children. Sometimes the lessons will be painful, sometimes they will involve suffering. ‘For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.’ [Hebrews 12:11]. If, as the writer of the letter to the Hebrews tells us, Jesus was made perfect through suffering [Hebrews 2:10], we should not be too surprised when God sends it our way to make us more like Christ. Sometimes, rather than being silent in our suffering, it is through our suffering that God speaks. ‘He delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity’ [Job 36:15].
But there is another reason why we sometimes suffer. Sometimes it is for the sake of the gospel. Such suffering, as Paul tells us in Colossians 1:24, is ‘filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church’. Paul is not suggesting here that Jesus’ death wasn’t fully sufficient for salvation but rather that more suffering will be required to bring the news of that salvation to those who do not yet know of it. Sometimes, therefore, our suffering is for the sake of others, the means by which grace comes to those who do not yet know the good news.
Paul doesn’t want to suffer for his sin, to do so would be to reject all that Jesus did for him at Calvary, but he does, I think, want to share in the sufferings of Christ and to be like him in his death, so that not only may he become more like Jesus, but also so that he might be used by God to bring the gospel to others.
The question I must ask myself is do I really want to know such suffering too?
If we do suffer for the sake of the gospel, whether as a direct result of our witness or by testifying to the beauty of the gospel as we continue to hope in it as we suffer, we can draw comfort from knowing that such suffering isn’t meaningless, that it has purpose, that it is for the sake of others. Furthermore, knowing that we have been considered worthy to suffer dishonour for the sake of the name of Jesus, we may even, like the disciples in Acts 5, find ourselves able to rejoice in our suffering even though that same suffering will bring with it great sorrow.
This isn’t to suggest that we should masochistically go in pursuit of suffering. Rather it is, perhaps, to suggest that there should sometimes be an acceptance that, when God lovingly sends suffering our way, that which we lose and which we are prone to value so highly is, in reality, often so much ‘garbage’. [Philippians 3:8]. Furthermore, we can take comfort that the suffering we do experience now is not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us [Romans 8:18], and that, however painful it genuinely is today, this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison [2 Corinthians 4:17]. If we understand this we will, perhaps, be a little more like Jesus in his death, in the way we accept the suffering that God allows us to experience – not that we will ever suffer to the degree that Christ did.
Sometimes bad things happen to good people, so that good things can happen to bad people. We rejoice that the worst possible thing happened to Jesus, the best of all persons, so that good things might happen to sinners like us. Let us pray, therefore, that like Paul we too might be prepared to share in the sufferings of Christ so that we might be used by God as a means of his grace by which his good news is brought to those who still need to hear it so badly.
And that wouldn’t be a bad thing, in fact it would be a very good thing indeed.
Because to suffer in such a way, seemingly undeservedly, far from being evidence of injustice on God’s part would, in fact, be evidence of his grace, both to those he reaches as a result of our suffering, and to we ourselves who, as well as being made more Christlike by it, can also what it is to experience the joy of being counted worthy to be used by Him in such a way.
For some further thoughts on suffering, click here
This tale is Part one of ‘Scrooge in the Time of Coronavirus’ which is Book Two of ‘The Dr Scrooge Chronicles’. Book One is entitled ‘A Primary Care Christmas Carol’.
To read ‘A Primary Care Christmas Carol ’, click here.
A TALE OF TWO PATIENTS
In which Dr Ebenezer Scrooge finds some meaning in the seemingly meaningless and determines to keep on keeping on – at least for a little longer yet.
It was a little after eight in the morning and Dr Ebenezer Scrooge was sitting at his desk, looking at his computer screen. He watched as, with every passing minute, the list of patients he had to call lengthened. He was the only doctor in the practice that morning as his partner, Dr Robert Cratchit, had phoned in earlier to report that, since his six month old son had developed a fever overnight, he’d have to self isolate and work from home pending the result of the Covid swab that he’d organise to have taken later that day. Though frustrated, Scrooge didn’t blame Bob. He knew his colleague wasn’t one to avoid work and understood that the practice had to be seen to comply with government guidance on limiting the potential spread of the coronavirus, even if the actual risk from his partner coming in to work was small and, perhaps, less than that posed to patients as a result of their care being compromised by his not being at work.
Scrooge reflected on how he’d never been so dissatisfied with his working life as he was now, more dissatisfied even than he had been, three years previously, when the spirits of General Practice Past, Present and Yet to Come had made their life changing nocturnal visits to him. A lot had happened since then. Bob, who had been a registrar at the time, had completed his training, joined the practice as a partner and even found time to marry one of the admin staff and have a child. But then Covid-19 had arrived on the scene and, as well as all the suffering and death it had caused, it had also had a significant effect on the provision of primary care.
Scrooge was alarmed by how fast the vision brought to him by the Ghost of General Practice Yet to Come was becoming a reality. More and more consultations were being undertaken remotely, a trend that, though undoubtedly necessary for a time, had been welcomed by much of the profession and was one that now seemed destined to continue. Scrooge though, a man so old fashioned he’d yet to switch to a height adjustable desk, was less enthusiastic. Though, to some, this contactless life might be considered ‘the new normal’, in Scrooge’s eyes at least, whilst new, it was in no way normal.
Furthermore Scrooge also found himself constantly worrying about the long term harm the response to the coronavirus might have. He understood, of course, that steps had needed to be taken to control the spread of the virus and a tricky balance had to be struck.
In the early days of the pandemic he had been informed that, as a GP, he’d be responsible for providing end of life care to patients with the coronavirus. He’d been told it was likely he would have to explain to many of them that, due to a lack of ventilators, it would not be possible for them all to be admitted to hospital and that a good number would, instead, have no option but to take their chances at home.
Scrooge had found all this deeply concerning, but when he started being asked to contact all his vulnerable patients and discuss with them their end of life preferences he sensed something wasn’t quite right. This feeling grew when he did a few calculations and realised that, were there to be 50,000 deaths in the country, a figure the government had initially suggested was the worse case scenario, he himself could expect to lose just one or possibly two of the 1800 patients on his own list. Was it really appropriate then, he wondered, to have hundreds of inevitably distressing discussions with his patients on such a sensitive subject when the actual numbers of those likely to die was so small?
What Scrooge did know though was that nearly six months into the pandemic not one of his patients had actually died, and only a couple had been hospitalised. He knew that elsewhere in the country the experience of other GPs would, no doubt, have been very different but nonetheless Scrooge remained worried about the consequences of the measures that were being taken to tackle the pandemic: the tens of thousands of non-Covid related deaths due to patients not receiving sufficiently timely treatment for their conditions, the hundreds of thousands of additional deaths that were likely to occur over time as a consequence of the lockdown having so badly damaged the economy, and the millions of people who would find themselves joining the queue for NHS treatment.
Scrooge sighed. It just seemed impossible to know what was genuinely for the best. It was, he thought, the worst of times – an age of foolishness and an epoch of incredulity – with absolutely no positive side to it. Still, his was not to reason why, his was but to do and, hopefully not die. And with that Scrooge realised that he’d better stop wondering how long he could continue working as a doctor and start instead phoning the numerous patients who’d already requested urgent contact with him that morning.
He quickly dealt with the first couple of calls which involved patients seeking advice about minor upper respiratory tract infections. He hated himself both for prescribing antibiotics (‘just in case’ due to his not being able to see and assess them properly) to patients who almost certainly didn’t need them, and for then going on to advise them that the whole household would now have to self isolate pending the symptomatic family member having a Covid swab. He knew that the former went against all he had tried to teach patients regarding how antibiotics were unnecessary for self limiting viral infections and that the latter would threaten the livelihoods of families but was nonetheless deemed essential even though, ever since his patients with possible Covid symptoms could have a swab taken, not one had come back showing a positive result.
The morning continued in similar fashion though soon, amongst the physical problems that were being presented, a number of cases relating to the mental health of patients required triaging. The isolation of lockdown was now getting a lot of people down and many more were experiencing high levels of anxiety. For many the concern was about catching the coronavirus, even amongst those for whom there was very little risk of their coming to any harm were they to do so – for others it was the threat to their livelihood that was causing them to lose sleep. Scrooge tried to support them as best he could but knew he’d be able to do it so much better if he could see a few of these folk face to face. Even then, however, the requisite plastic apron, latex gloves and face mask would make meaningful conversation on sensitive matters difficult.
At mid morning there was a knock on the door announcing the arrival of one of the reception staff with a cup of coffee and a selection of biscuits. Scrooge accepted them gratefully and munched on a custard cream whilst signing the prescription handed to him by the receptionist. It had been requested urgently by a patient who was currently waiting for it in reception.
Brushing the crumbs from his lips, Scrooge looked back at his computer screen and noticed another call had come in from an elderly man who’s problem had been flagged simply as ‘back pain’. Pleased to have such a straight forward call to deal with, Scrooge picked up the phone and dialled the patients number. Within a few rings the patient answered.
‘Hello, is that Mr Carton? It’s Dr Scrooge, how can I help?’
‘That was quick doctor, I hadn’t expected you to ring back so quickly, I know how busy you all are, what with this virus and all. But don’t worry about that with me, it’s just my back that’s the problem. It’s kept me awake all night it has – I’ve never before experienced anything like it.’
Scrooge asked a few more questions and didn’t sense that anything particularly concerning was going on other than the fact that Mr Carton, a man not prone to call for help unnecessarily, seemed quite agitated by the pain and that he’d not had any relief from even his wife’s reasonably strong painkillers. Scrooge decided that he had perhaps better see his elderly patient after all. He felt guilty for doing so since the guidance was so insistent that all patients should be managed remotely wherever possible.
‘I’d like to see you Mr Carton, but before I do I need to ask a few more questions. Have you developed a new persistent cough lately?’
‘No doctor, it’s just my back, it’s like …”
‘Or a fever?’
‘No doctor, as I was…’
‘And have you lost your sense of smell at all’
There was a pause on the end of the line as Mr Carton clearly struggled to understand the relevance of such a question to his clearly stated problem of back pain. Eventually he answered in the negative and Scrooge asked him to come down to the surgery but to wait in the car park until he was ready to see him. He’d ring in 15 minutes and say when it was safe for him to enter the building.
Whilst he was waiting Scrooge dealt with a few more telephone calls including one from Enid Gray. Mrs Gray was terminally ill and had been so for some while. She had survived longer than had been expected despite, on Scrooge’s advice, repeatedly ignoring the letters sent out under his name inviting her to have a repeat blood test to determine if she were still pre-diabetic. But now she was undoubtedly losing her battle with cancer and was very definitely going rapidly downhill. He picked up the phone and was soon speaking to the patient he’d become very fond of ever since he’d invited her to share Christmas Day with Cratchit and himself a few years previously.
‘Hello Mrs Gray, how are you? How can I help?’
‘Oh I am sorry to bother you Dr Scrooge. It’s just that I feel so tired at the moment. Since I came out of hospital I’ve simply no energy at all’.
Mrs Gray had been admitted the week before having taken a fall at home. She had been discharged precipitously under the guise of it being too dangerous for her to stay in hospital in the middle of a global pandemic. Little thought seemed to have been given, however, to the risk of her living alone without an adequate package of care. Mrs Gray did not have a smart phone so there was no possibility of Scrooge doing a video consultation with her. Despite this, and though he hated himself for even thinking it, were Mrs Gray to die, since she’d been seen so recently in hospital, Scrooge knew he wouldn’t have the unnecessary nuisance of having to liaise with the coroner about her death, not under the new guidance that had come out on the issuing of death certificates during the pandemic. Even so, Scrooge looked up the results of the tests taken during Mrs Gray’s hospital stay. He noticed that she’d been found to be a little anaemic and so Scrooge suggested that he write Mrs Gray a prescription for some iron tablets and arrange for the district nurses to check a further blood test later in the week. Mrs Gray seemed happy enough with this plan but Scrooge nonetheless stressed that, should she feel any worse, she could call him again at any time.
By the time he’d done this he noticed that it was time to see if Mr Carton had arrived. He called him on his mobile and learnt that he was indeed waiting in the carpark. Scrooge invited him in saying he’d meet him in the waiting room. He then donned his PPE being careful to tie the plastic apron about his waist before putting on his gloves, experience having taught him that with gloves on it was nigh on impossible to tie the apron effectively. Mask applied Scrooge then went to the empty waiting room pending Mr Carton’s arrival. As he sat there, perched on the radiator, he surveyed the carefully spaced seats that so few people these days sat on. It saddened him that this was no longer a place where people gathered waiting to be seen, somewhere one might bump into an old acquaintance that one hadn’t seen for years and with whom one might catch up on each other’s news.
A few minutes later Mr Carton arrived accompanied by an obviously very anxious Mrs Carton. It was becoming something of a trend now but once again Scrooge found himself hating what he was doing as he asked Mrs Carton if she wouldn’t mind waiting outside. ‘Because of the Coronavirus’, he added by way of explanation. Walking together toward his consulting room Scrooge paused by the waste bin in the corner of the waiting area and, by holding his apron close to the container, indicated to Mr Carton how that which was now supposedly protecting him from a deadly virus, was made of the exact same material as that which now lined the bin. It always amused Scrooge to point this out to patients even if by doing so it served only to make him feel even more rubbish about himself.
Back in his consulting room, and having run over the symptoms again, Scrooge asked Mr Carton to pop up on the couch. Scrooge had noticed that the agitation that he had sensed in his patient on the phone was apparent speaking to him in the flesh, Mr Carton was finding it difficult to stay still. Up on the couch Scrooge noticed something else – a pulsatile mass in his abdomen which could be nothing other than an abdominal aortic aneurysm.
After explaining the seriousness of the situation and calling for an ambulance, it wasn’t long before Mr Carton was being led away by two paramedics to the emergency vehicle that was now parked outside the front doors of the medical centre. Scrooge walked out with them and caught site of his patient’s increasing worried wife. Stepping over towards her, Scrooge explained what was happening to the man she’d been married to for more than fifty years.
‘I’m afraid you won’t be allowed to go with him, Mrs Carton. The hospital aren’t allowing any visitors at the moment you see.’
‘But he will be OK?’, she asked, ‘I will see him again won’t I?
Scrooge wanted to look her the eye but found himself unable to meet her gaze. ‘I’m sure he’ll be fine’ he said, trying to sound confident before adding, more honestly, ‘At least, I hope he will’. With that Scrooge went back inside, removed his PPE and placed it in the bin. Along with all that was being used both by him and the rest of the practice staff, he pondered how long it would take for all of it to biodegrade. He thought how insignificant his previous use of the odd plastic straw now seemed in comparison to environmental impact of all this discarded PPE.
The day continued in similar vein and when he eventually finished the day’s work shortly after 7.30 he noted that he’d completed 86 individual patient contacts made up of telephone calls and face to face consultations. In addition there had been the day’s post to read and act on, blood results to deal with and many, many repeat prescriptions, requests for sick notes and other sundry other administrative jobs. It hadn’t been the busiest of days but it was somewhere close to it. And yet he thought to himself, if the posts he had seen on social media were anything to go by, many people out there felt that GPs had reneged on their duty throughout the coronavirus crisis.
As he logged off from his computer he noticed the four cold cups of coffee sitting undrunk on his desk, together testifying to how busy his day had been. What he couldn’t understand however was why there was never an accompanying pile of uneaten biscuits! ‘Another medical mystery’ he said to himself as he stood up, ‘but one that will have to remain unsolved for the time being. I’m off home.’
Scrooge locked up the building, got into his car, and set off for home. He tried to turn his thoughts away from the day, but as he drove the radio was playing Solomon Burke’s ‘Cry to me’. Hearing of how loneliness was such a waste of time, of how it made you want to cry, Scrooge couldn’t help but think again of Mrs Gray and so, having deviated from his usual route home, he soon found himself parked up outside her home instead.
Walking to the door to the stairwell of the block of flats in which she lived, Scrooge noticed a now faded rainbow that someone had painted on the adjacent wall. Underneath were written the ubiquitous words ‘Thank you NHS’. Scrooge averted his eyes, uneasy at what seemed to him as yet another shrine erected to an organisation that, whilst wonderful, was being deified in ways that weren’t helpful, by a population that was putting all its hope in an NHS that could not possibly deliver all that was being asked of it. He didn’t consider himself a hero of the pandemic, that particular label he felt, would surely be better applied to those who would lose their jobs and livelihood over all of this.
Scrooge pulled opened the door and climbed the steps to Mrs Gray’s flat. As he donned yet more PPE he noticed the piles of bottles filling the recycling box of the flat opposite that of Mrs Gray. Somebody was clearly doing their bit to support the local off-licence in these difficult times. Scrooge wondered if the young Mum who lived there, and who had called him several times this week regarding various minor problems, might be better served by a face to face consultation. Perhaps she’d feel freer to talk when she wasn’t being overheard by her partner, given how he was known to have problems ‘managing his anger’. He made a mental note to call her in the morning before turning back to Mrs Gray’s flat and ringing her doorbell.
Nobody came to the door and so Scrooge rang it again. Again there was no response. Trying the door and finding it unlocked, he gently pushed it open and entered the flat.
‘Hello? Mrs Gray? It’s Dr Scrooge – is anybody here?’
Scrooge made his way in the direction of the feeble voice that called out from the back room and found there Mrs Gray, laid uncomfortably on her bed, desperately pale, weak and laboured in her breathing.
‘Dr Scrooge, what are you doing here?’ Mrs Gray asked, barely able to voice the words. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to call round, I know how busy you all are at the moment. And aren’t you supposed to avoid visiting people like me?’
Scrooge looked down at his feet and felt ashamed at the thoughts he’d had when he’d spoken to her earlier that day.
‘Some would say so, Mrs Gray, some would say so’, he replied and, realising that Mrs Gray’s time was near, Scrooge did something else that he wasn’t supposed to do. He pulled off his mask and apron and, after slipping off his gloves, took Mrs Gray’s hand as he sat down next to her on the chair that stood by her bed
‘Enid’, he added, thinking to himself how nobody should be allowed to die without a friend present, no matter what anyone says, ‘I suspect that what I am now doing is a far far better thing than I have ever done. Of course I should be visiting you.’
Mrs Gray smiled at Scrooge, and Scrooge smiled gently back.
Thirty five minutes later, after a call to the local funeral director, Scrooge was back in his car. Picking up his phone he dialed the number for the hospital and was informed that Mr Carton had had his aneurysm repaired and, all being well, would be allowed home the following day. The vascular team had apparently had little else to do and so had wasted no time in dealing with what was the most interesting case they had had in weeks.
Scrooge smiled again, this time to himself. Perhaps his actions today hadn’t changed the world, but they had made a world of difference to at least one or two people he’d had the privilege of helping. Perhaps he thought, he would continue in General Practice, at least for a little while longer. And that, he decided, was cause for celebration. After all, as one whose income had not been threatened by the events of the last six months, he had much to be grateful for, not to mention a civic duty to support the local economy.
And besides, he’d had nothing to drink all day.
‘Scrooge in the time of Coronavirus’, continues with ‘Its A Wonderful GP Life’ which can be read here
To read the full story of ‘A Primary Care Christmas Carol’, click here
Other medically related Christmas themed blogs:
To read ‘How the Grinch and Covid stole General Practices Christmas’, click here
To read ‘Twas the night before Christmas – 2020’, click here
To read ‘A Merry, and Resilient, Christmas’, click here
Four things I have learnt as a result of living through the last six months of Covid-19
1. It is possible to be content with less. Rather than constantly striving to gain more from this life, I would do well to be content to enjoy the gift of life I already have. I can eat drink and be merry, not merely because that is all there is and tomorrow I might die, but because today I am alive, and there is food, drink and merriment there to be enjoyed. I should be thankful for all that I have already been given.
2. Much of this life is uncertain. I do not know what tomorrow will bring, still less that which will occur next week, next month, next year. I am neither the master of my fate, nor that of those I love, or those for whom I care. It is foolish to imagine or insist that I can control even my small corner of the world and, whilst not encouraging a careless disregard for the safety of others, it is foolishness for me to try. Furthermore I should not be too surprised when the unexpected occurs, regardless of how unwelcome that occurrence might be.
3. There is much I do not and can not know and plenty more that is not for me to ever know. With experts in constant disagreement and governmental advice changing every day, neither scientists nor politicians can be expected to infallibly guide us in how best to proceed, Since even science is not omniscient, wisdom dictates that I acknowledge how little I truly understand and that I should neither arrogantly pretend I invariably know best nor intolerantly criticise those who clearly don’t know either. Everyone makes mistakes and all of us are allowed to sometimes be wrong.
4. An unhealthy and excessive fear of death enslaves me. Whilst it is perhaps only human to be anxious at the prospect of my death, only ever acting is ways that reduce my chance of dying serves only to make me less humane. Furthermore, merely submitting to a new set of rules will not keep me safe and there is no point in being alive if, in so doing, I fail to live the life I have been given. Such a life would be nothing more than a living death.
Lost in the wilderness we need to be careful who we listen to. Some voices are worth listening to more than others.
“I am the fear of death, that ties you up and pins you down, that puts in you the fear of life and sucks the joy from every day you walk this earth.
You shall have no other gods but me.
You shall not listen to any voice but mine. You will keep my commandments and pay no heed to anyone who, speaking of a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light, offers you rest for your soul.
You shall distance yourself from those in need, avoid those who are sick in hospital and abandon those dying in their homes. For those who suffer and die, even those you love the most, must do so alone.
You shall not smile at a stranger in a shop.
You shall not congregate to sing your combined praises to God, neither shall you gather in numbers to celebrate love, to welcome the newly born, or to mourn the recently departed.
You shall not comfort the sorrowful with a touch.
You shall not find enjoyment in your work. On the contrary, you shall deprive yourself of your livelihood and provide for neither yourself nor your family.
You shall not honour your mother nor your father but rather be as a stranger to them.
You shall not gather together to support your favourite team, neither shall you eat, drink or be merry. Instead you will die a little every day.
You shall remember all of this constantly, never resting from it, not even for one day.”
None of this is meant to suggest that we shouldn’t act to try to reduce the spread of the virus, but our attempts to eliminate all risk from life are not without significant adverse effects, some of which compromise what it means to be alive. The fear of death permeates all of life.
Oh that there was one who might free us from this fear of death, for then we would be free indeed.
It is, however, my firm belief that there is such a one. It is my certain hope that His words are true. Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. [John 11:25-26]. He did not come back from the dead after a brief visit there only to have to return at some later date. Rather he defeated death as he passed through it before emerging safely on the other side. Our hope should be that we are saved, not from death, but through death, by the one who has gone before us. And that is why we should listen to Him when he says, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” [Revelation 1:17-18]
Therein lies freedom – true freedom that will last.
idly whiling and wasting away whilst the malignly incurable careers purposefully on the persistent pain busily insistent
restless cries rise
long days drag endlessly on
the wheels turn slowly please wait patiently they’ll be round soon
brief time rushes effortlessly past
still silence falls
motionless lips murmur now no more their pleas and thank-yous over, they cease their quiet gratitude and the interminable ends as a line is drawn under
If you are feeling sad about the thought of having to wear a face mask for the foreseeable future, down about the restrictions that remain over what we can and cannot do, and concerned about the economic consequences of lockdown every bit as much as you are about those who continue to contract coronavirus and the possibility of a second wave, then you may, like me, find yourself longing for a time before all this, when things seemed better than they currently are.
But the Bible has something to say to those of us who feel this way. It tells us that we are not being wise.
‘Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.’ [Ecclesiastes 7:10]
Why might this be?
One reason is that we are not being wise if we think that God is somehow in less control today than he was a year ago, that his sovereignty has been compromised, that he no longer works all things for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. [Romans 8:28] Because God has not changed. He is still good, his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness continues to all generations. [Psalm 100:5]
Rather then than allowing what we now experience to cause us to yearn for days that are past, days which, though they may be fondly remembered as so much better than they are today, had, in reality, amply sufficient trouble of their own, we would do well to allow instead our longing for better times to point us forward to that day which is surely coming when all that is currently wrong will be put right.
The Preacher in Ecclesiastes who counsels us that it is unwise to long for days that are past does so because our happiness is not to be found there. What we fondly remember is but a reminder of what has been lost and a shadow of what will one day be.
As C.S. Lewis wrote:
‘The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; for it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. 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 far country we have not yet visited.’
This longing for what we do not yet see is the eternity for which we were made, the eternity that God has placed in our hearts. [Ecclesiastes 3:11].
So though, for a time, our faces may have to remain masked, let us look forward to what will one day be, let us look forward to a time when, not only will the whole of creation be restored to how it was always meant to be but we all will also, with unveiled faces, behold the glory of the Lord and be transformed into that same image’. [2 Corinthians 3:18]
‘For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now [we] know in part; then [we] shall know fully, even as [we] have been fully known’. [1 Corinthians 13:12].
SOVEREIGNTY OVER SUFFERING
God is ‘enthroned as the Holy One’ [Psalm 22:3].
Despite God’s absolute sovereignty, despite his spotless purity, David, the one described as a man after God’s own heart [1 Samuel 13:14], was allowed to experience desperate suffering. It was not because of a lack of power or righteousness on God’s part.
Neither was it because of some deficiency in God that Jesus suffered. On the contrary, ‘it was the will of the LORD to crush him; [Isaiah 53:10] He was ‘delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God’ [Acts 2:23], ‘as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. [Romans 3:25-26]
God chose for David to suffer. God chose for Jesus to suffer. For righteousness sake.
And he may likewise chose for us to suffer too. And if he does we can draw comfort from the fact that it will be according to the ‘good and acceptable and perfect’ will of God [Romans 12:2]. No matter its intensity, just as David and Jesus’s suffering had a purpose, so too will ours. It will be be for righteousness sake and It will be for our good, a ‘light momentary affliction [that] is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison [2 Corinthians 4:17].
Let us then not be surprised when suffering comes, but be granted the faith to know that ‘after [we] have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called [us] to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish [us] [1 Peter 5:10].
We shall know then the fullness of the eternal glory that we now proclaim. Despite the suffering described at its start, Psalm 22 ends with a description of how the poor and afflicted will eat and be satisfied [v26]. Even those who could not keep themselves alive will eat and worship [v29]. Their hearts will live forever [v26]. Blessed [too are we who] are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ [Revelation 19:9]. By believing in the one who said I am the resurrection and the life, we are those who ‘though [we] die, yet shall [we] live’ [John 11:25].
The suffering we experience now may be great but we can be sure that there is a day coming when every tear will be wiped away and death shall be no more, ‘neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things [will] have passed away’ [Revelation 21:4]
Though suffering may come, may we proclaim the Lord’s righteousness today. May His name be praised for evermore.
THE WRITINGS ON THE WALL
The writing was on the wall for King Belshazzar that night when Darius the Mede took over his kingdom in Daniel 5. We can learn from his experience that, as with King Belshazzar, God holds in his hand our lives and all our ways.
In our fallenness and arrogant pride we resist this and struggle to break free, longing to be the masters of our own fate. But by faith we know that, despite how it may sometimes seem, to be in the hands of the one who rules over the whole of creation is not only a good thing, it is the best thing.
God has numbered the days of our lives and will one day bring them to an end. Were we to be weighed on the scales we too would be found wanting. But rather than separating us from himself he has chosen to be merciful to us and unite us to his son Jesus Christ, who humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities and upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.
And so, on account of that perfect sacrifice, we are redeemed, our sin is atoned for and there is now no condemnation for we who are in Christ. And so, even though like Belshazzar we will die, on account of Jesus, the one who is both the resurrection and the life, yet shall we live.
May he, in his loving kindness, continue to humble us daily, even as we humble ourselves before him, may our knees, along with every other knee in heaven and on earth, gladly bow at the name of Jesus and may our tongues, along with every tongue, confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father
For He is the King Hallelujah.
SIGNED, SEALED AND DELIVERED?
I like how, what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:3,
‘And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.’
is a fulfilment of God’s promise of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31:33
‘For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’
The Old Covenant with all its demands, rather than commend us, could only condemn.
The New Covenant however, secured by the blood of Jesus [Luke 22:20], provides us with the righteousness we could not produce. The gospel, the power of God for salvation [Romans 1:16], changes us, writing on our hearts what once was written only on tablets of stone.
It is not what we do that commends us but rather what Christ has done, in and through us. If we think we can prove that we are good Christians by what we do we put ourselves under the law and will fail. But if we are not ashamed of the gospel, if we have confidence in Christ and trust him to be the great Saviour he is, we will see him graciously succeed in making us, and others, those who are pleasing to him.
Thanks be to God.
GOOD GRIEF
2 Corinthians 7:9 is an interesting verse that teach a hard lesson – that God sometimes works through suffering and sadness to bring about his good purposes.
‘As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us.’
There is such a thing as ‘godly grief’, a sorrow that God intends for us which is for our good and for our ultimate joy.
It is the way of the cross.
Through what is painful, through what is contrary to what we may naturally desire and through what the world considers as foolishness, [1 Corinthians 1:18] God in his wisdom is pleased to work for our joy.
That was how it was for Jesus, ‘who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, [Hebrews 12:2]. Such is God’s love for us that he may, as a result of that love, ordain suffering and sadness for us too.
‘For the Lord disciplines the one he loves…he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.’ [Hebrews 12:6,10-11]
Wonderfully, God is more concerned with the eternal joy that we will know as a result of our being made like Jesus than the transient happiness we may feel from getting what we want today.
Praise God for that he knows what’s best for us better than we do ourselves, not least, like the Corinthians, our need to be broken and brought to repentance.
WAITING PATIENTLY
What an encouragement is found in Psalm 4O for those who, despite knowing they are saved, continue to find life a struggle. Because whilst it is a psalm of David and a psalm that points us to Christ, it is, as the writer of the notes suggests, also our story.
Even though we can joyfully sing of how we have been lifted out of the miry pit and had our feet set on a rock, even though we have had a new song put in our mouth, and even though we are blessed as those who have put their trust in God, even so, troubles without number still surround us.
That they do does not question the reality of the salvation that we already have. We have been saved but still we have a need to go on being saved.
Our salvation is both already and not yet.
But one day we can be sure that we will know what it is to fully saved, we can sure that everything that is currently wrong will one day be made forever right, because, poor and needy though we may find ourselves this morning, the Lord still thinks of us.
And so, confident of our future and despite the difficulties we currently experience, may we rejoice and be glad in him today.
May we speak of his righteousness, faithfulness and love. And, as we wait patiently for the LORD, may He be exalted.
‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life’.
Jesus Christ [John 12:24-25]
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to rumble on, there are still many people who, understandably enough, are worried about the possibility of their dying of the disease. My concern, however, is that I have not yet died enough.
One of the things that has become apparent over the last few months is that we all, myself included, have an opinion as to how the current crises can best be resolved. And we’re all too happy to voice that opinion. Why is that I wonder?
Perhaps it is because we have a need to think that we’re in control, that there is something that we can do about the problems that we face. Some of us may be comforted into thinking that everything will be a OK by believing that the government and their advisors are doing all that is required, but others of us are less sure and instead draw comfort by believing that at least we know what needs to be done and that, if we shout it loudly enough, somebody will hear and implement our sage advice.
But what if that wasn’t the case. What if there really was nothing that we could do? What if we really were helpless? What then? Might we have to look elsewhere for our comfort?
Recently I have been working my way through a book entitled ‘On being a theologian of the cross’. It takes a look at Martin Luther’s 1518 Heidelberg Disputation. If that sounds rather heavy that’ll be because it is a little. Even so, it really is quite brilliant.
God is who he is. And we need to understand him in relation to who he has revealed himself to be rather than on the basis of how we would like him to be. The two are often very different. Luther sees the cross as central to Christianity. He calls it God’s ‘alien work’, an attack on sin which, since our aspirations are as fallen as the rest of us, is also an attack on who we are in our fallen state. In short our desires are not what they ought to be and, as a result, those things that we want and which we might expect God to be pleased to deliver, may not necessarily be what God wants. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ, that wholly unexpected event in history, is central to God’s revelation of himself. At the cross, seemingly paradoxically, we see him manifesting his glory through suffering and death. Luther calls those who understand God in these terms, ‘theologians of the cross’. They are, he says, those who see God as he really is.
Luther also has a name for those who, along with the world, see the crucifixion of Jesus as foolishness. He calls then ‘Theologians of Glory’. They are those who consider the cross to be ‘folly’ [1 Corinthians 1:23] As a result of their fallen nature, they not only glory in the same things that the world glories in, but also imagine that God glories in those things too.
But when we expect God to act in the way that we want him to, when we expect him to want for us what we would want for ourselves, we are, in fact, creating for ourselves a God in our own image. In so doing we are usurping the ‘God who is there’ and seeking to place ourselves on his throne.
God, however, is God. He is who he wills to be. His ways are higher than ours, as are his thoughts, [Isaiah 55:9], ‘his greatness is unsearchable’ [Psalm 145:3], and ‘the thunder of his power’ is not something that, of ourselves, we can understand?’ [Job 26:14]. And so we find that God often works in ways that surprise us, in ways that we would not chose. Frequently, as he did at Calvary, God works through pain and suffering and, just as it was through the cross that he most fully revealed himself to the world, so we must be prepared for Him to sometimes still use pain and suffering as the means by which he most fully reveals himself to us.
However, because of our fallen nature, we are all, by default, theologians of glory. And because we can not be what we are not, it is impossible for us to see God for who he really is without him breaking into our lives and changing who we are. As theologians of glory, those who think as the world does in terms of performance and reward, we find it impossible to understand what was achieved through the death of Jesus on the cross. And so, rather than being the recipients of the grace and mercy that was poured out there, we instead keep on trying to merit God’s approval. We like to think that, somewhere deep within us, there is a kernel of goodness that might allow us to do something that would impress God enough to earn his favour. We comfort ourselves by imagining that if we try just a little bit harder, we might, by our efforts, make progress in our search for his acceptance.
But what if that wasn’t the case. What if there really was nothing that we could do? What if we really were helpless? What then? Might we have to look elsewhere for our comfort?
Luther is convinced that in our fallen state we really are helpless. There really is nothing we can do to change. Everything about us is flawed and, as has already be stated, our default position is such that we are all, myself included, theologians of glory. This inherent tendency in me was made apparent when in an earlier draft of this, I initially wrote of how I needed to ‘allow’ God to be God! ‘Allow’? Really? What pretension on my part to think God needs permission from me to be who he is!
Not only then do theologians of glory imagine that God wants for us what we want for ourselves, that he will provide our best life now, a life characterised by health, wealth and prosperity, they also believe that we are inherently worthy of God’s love and that we can, by an effort of the will prove ourselves to be so.
But they are wrong, and we can’t.
In fact, according to Luther, a belief that we can earn God’s favour in our own strength is sinful in itself, and only worsens our situation further. By maintaining that by keeping the law we can make ourselves any more acceptable to God, we deny the need for his grace and thus compound our guilt. The first thesis of Luther’s disputation states that, ‘The law of God, the most salutary doctrine of life, cannot advance humans on their way to righteousness, but rather hinders them’. This is wholly in keeping with Paul when he writes that ‘by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.’ [Romans 3:20]
Our problem then is far greater than we would like to imagine.
It’s not merely that we need to try harder – rather it is that the task is too hard.
It’s not merely that we need to think more highly of others – rather it is that we need to think less highly of ourselves
It’s not merely that we need to humble ourselves – rather it is that we need to be humbled.
God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble [James 4:6]. It is only when we come to despair completely in the effectiveness of our own efforts that we are able to receive the grace that God is so eager to pour out on us. And to be brought to this point, to be humbled so completely, our old selves need to die. It is my concern, as I said above, that I have not died enough.
Theologians of glory think as the world thinks, they stress our worth and minimise the necessity of the cross. They see the crucifixion as merely a demonstration of God’s love for us rather than the bloody sacrifice that was required for our salvation. In contrast theologians of the cross see things as they really are. They acknowledge our inherent sinfulness and the perilous danger we are in if we fail to appreciate this reality. And they accept that God, just as he did 2000 years ago through the means of cruel nails and a bloody cross, still sometimes works to bring about his purposes in ways that are incomprehensible to the world.
Sometimes he works through heartache and sorrow,
Sometimes he works through pain and suffering.
And sometimes, perhaps, he even works through a global pandemic.
Along with Bob Dylan, my favourite musician is Leonard Cohen. Following his death a few years ago I wrote a short blog after I came across something interesting he had said in response to being asked why so many of his songs had a melancholic feel to them. If you’re so minded you can read that blog here, but this is what he said:
‘We all love a sad song. Everybody has experienced the defeat of their lives. Nobody has a life that worked out the way they wanted it to. We all begin as the hero of our own dramas in centre stage and inevitably life moves us out of centre stage, defeats the hero, overturns the plot and the strategy and we’re left on the side-lines wondering why we no longer have a part – or want a part – in the whole…thing. Everybody’s experienced this, and when it’s presented to us sweetly, the feeling moves from heart to heart and we feel less isolated and we feel part of the great human chain which is really involved with the recognition of defeat’.
Cohen here is speaking like a theologian of the cross, one who acknowledges the normality of sadness and appreciates how life is about ‘the recognition of defeat’. But here’s the thing. Is there, I wonder, a joy to be had in being conquered by someone who is greater than ourselves, who is worthy of our admiration and in whom we can delight? I think there is. By seeking satisfaction in ourselves we ‘have committed two evils: [we] have forsaken [God], the fountain of living waters, and hewn out cisterns for [ourselves], broken cisterns that can hold no water.’ [Jeremiah 2:13]. There is though real refreshment to be had in the contentment that comes from no longer having to win, a relief that comes from having the burden of being awesome lifted, a real pleasure that flows from admiring the God who really can satisfy our souls.
I believe that to be conquered by God is good for us all. It would most certainly be good for me.
And so, when life is difficult, as it sometimes is, for me as well as others, and when I am tempted to wonder where God might be, I need to think more like a theologian of the cross, one who sees God working through the pain and sadness, breaking my fragile dependence on myself in order that I might depend securely on him, lessening my unsatisfying obsession with who I am in order that I might be fully satisfied in who he is, and lovingly putting me to death in order that I might one day rise again in Christ.
Perhaps it is when the difficulties seem to be genuinely overwhelming that it is time for me to believe that ‘this light momentary affliction [really] is preparing for [me] an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as [I] look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal’ [2 Corinthians 4:17-18].
Only as God lovingly brings me to this point will I find real comfort in ‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God’ [2 Corinthians 1:3-4]
But as these verses continue we see again the paradoxical nature of God, one who refuses to conform to worldly expectations. For it is not only that God comforts us in our suffering but that, paradoxically, as we suffer that we are comforted. Furthermore it is as we suffer that we are able to comfort others who, as they themselves suffer, are themselves comforted too.
Having started with a statement on the inability of man to contribute anything to their salvation, Luther completes the Heidelberg Disputation with words which once more are totally contrary to how the world thinks. This is what he says: ‘The love of God does not first discover but creates what is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through attraction to what pleases it.’
And here too is real comfort. Whilst our love is only ever a response to what we find lovely, God’s love originates within himself. Therefore he loves us, not because we are lovely, but because he is the one who is love [John 4:8]. Furthermore he loves us in order to make us lovely. Though we can not do anything to warrant it in and of ourselves, God, through the foolishness of the cross, through the pain, suffering and death experienced both there and in our lives, does everything necessary to make us how we were always meant to be, everything necessary for our salvation including all that is required to make us humble enough to accept it. And, because he loves us, he does it regardless of how painful it might seem to us at the time.
‘For the Lord disciplines the one he loves…he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.’ [Hebrews 12:6,10-11]
‘Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!’ [Romans 11:33]
God is a theologian of the cross.
‘[He] is God and there is no other; [he] is God there is none like [him]’ [Isaiah 46:9]
‘[He] kill[s] and [He] make[s] alive; [He] wound[s] and [He] heal[s]; and there is none that can deliver out of [his] hand’ [Deuteronomy 32:39]
Oh that I might know and be known by the one true God, the God who is like no other. Oh that he would wound me that I might be healed – that he would kill me that I would be made alive. Oh that I might be forever in his hands.
And oh that He would do everything necessary to make me a true theologian of the cross, even if , in order to make me ‘rely not on [myself] but on God who raises the dead’ it makes me feel, like Paul, that I ‘had received the sentence of death’ [2 Corinthians 1:9].
Jesus said ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.’ [Mark 8:34-35]. May I be brought to the point whereby I know what it is to follow Jesus in the way he calls me too. And may I also know what it is to, by the Spirit, put to death, the deeds of the body and thereby live. [Romans 8:13]
Because, though ‘to live is Christ…to die is gain’ [Philippians 1:21]. He will raise me from death and it is only then that I ‘shall see him as he is’, it is only then that I ‘shall be like [Jesus]’ [1 John 3:2], and it is only then that I will know the full joy of of being with him forever. [Luke 23:43].
So now, ‘to him who is able’, sometimes by trials or tribulations and sometimes by death or disease, ‘to keep [us] from stumbling and to present [us] blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen’ [Jude 1:24-25].
To read ‘But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope’, click here
To read ‘Covid 19 – does it suggest we really did have the experience but miss the meaning?’, click here
To read ‘Why do bad things happen to good people? – a tentative suggestion’, click here
To read ‘Faith in the time of Coronavirus- 1’, click here
To read ‘Hope comes from believing the promises of God’, click here
And for some more thoughts on suffering, click here
For ‘Reflections on the death of Leonard Cohen’, click here
ADDENDUM – LUTHER ON THE BLACK DEATH
“I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance inflict and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence.
If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others.
If my neighbor needs me however I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely as stated above.
See, this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash no foolhardy and does not tempt God.”
Luther’s Works Volume 43,,pg 132: the letter “Whether one may flee from a Deadly Plague” written to Rev. Dr. John Hess
Regardless of whether the cause is a global pandemic or ‘a little local difficulty’, irrespective of whether it’s due to the reckless actions of others or one’s own tragic mistake, everybody sometimes hurts.
And for some the sadness is too much.
For some all hope of happiness has gone.
I sit with another desperately unhappy patient with low self-esteem and a catalogue of problems which I am powerless to do anything about. I want to help but what can I say that might be even remotely comforting in the face of such unhappiness. Perhaps it’d be better to say nothing at all, to simply listen and try and understanding what has happened to make the person feel the way they do. ‘All I only ever wanted was to be happy’, they say.
The desire to be happy is universal. At least, Blaise Pascal thought so. He wrote:
‘All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. This is the motive of every action of every man, even if those who hang themselves.’
If Pascal was right, the question then becomes ‘But what will make us happy?’ In the medical setting you might expect the answer to be ‘health’ but, although the conversations I have occur largely in the context of a GP’s surgery, they rarely have much to do with the physical aspects of wellbeing. Many seek happiness in their families but, whilst many do find it there, all too often it is the trials of family life that have led to the sadness I hear about.
Many then seek happiness through an assurance that they are ‘O.K.’ Some strive for that assurance through the acclaim of others as a result of success and status, whilst others, when the admiration of others isn’t forthcoming, try self affirmation, rewarding themselves with such things as food, alcohol, sex, holidays, possessions and all manner of other minor pleasures, each of which is used to stroke egos, affirm worth, and boost self-esteem by allowing them to gently whisper, ‘You’re worth it, you’re somebody’.
But the effect is always short lived and before long another shot of appreciation is required.
A while back I saw a T-shirt. Emblazoned across it were the words: ‘Don’t forget to be awesome’. Such advice is dangerous for a number of reasons. Firstly it puts an onerous burden upon us and requires us to be so much better than we really know ourselves to be. It encourages us to pretend to be something we know inside we are not and it forces us to compare ourselves unfavourably to others who are seemingly so much more awesome than we are. Secondly, if we genuinely believe ourselves to have achieved a degree of awesomeness, we will inevitably arrogantly imagine ourselves to be far more important than we really are, so much better than others. We may even be foolish enough to consider that what we think, do and say has intrinsic worth simply because it is we, the allegedly awesome, who have thought, done or said it. After all awesome is, as awesome does.
And thirdly it will make us unhappy.
If we are looking for happiness within ourselves we are looking for it in the wrong place – our obsession with self-esteem is counterproductive since real happiness is found outside of ourselves. Consider this. Have you ever climbed a mountain and admired the view or gazed at the beauty of a sunset? Have you ever looked up into the night sky and been amazed by the stars, or stood on the coast as the waves crash against the rocks? If you have, have you ever you thought to yourself “I could stay here and enjoy that view forever”?. Most people I ask this readily agree that they have. At that moment they have felt happy, satisfied, not because of who they are or what they have, but because of what they are seeing. They are standing on the edge of greatness and are satisfied simply by witnessing that greatness. John Piper asks:
‘Do people go to the Grand Canyon to increase their self-esteem? Probably not. This is, at least, a hint that the deepest joys in life come not from savouring the self, but from seeing splendour.’
We go to the Grand Canyon not to boost our self-esteem, but to go ‘Wow!’.
CS Lewis, in his essay ‘The Weight of Glory’ commented that our desires are:
‘… not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.’
So what should I say to my unhappy patient? Of course listen and empathise. Of course provide them with any help I can, or direct them to those better positioned to do so. But should I try to boost their self-esteem? Whilst it is undoubtedly true that some folk have an unhelpfully low view of themselves, it is equally true that many, myself included, have far too great a need to feel good about themselves. Could it be then, that to give yet one more fix of ‘You’re OK’ to such a person would serve only to deepen their addiction to self still further?
We must first do no harm. Since feeling good about oneself is not the ultimate source of happiness that many have been led to believe , might it not be better to encourage people to look outside of themselves and search for that which is truly great? Of course my patient wants to be happy. I want them to be happy, infinitely and eternally happy. For that they don’t need high self-esteem but to esteem highly the infinitely and eternally great – that which is genuinely awesome.
I am not awesome. And striving to be so or pretending that I am, would be nothing more than a distraction, drawing my attention away from that which is. From God who is.
There is more happiness to be found in knowing that one is held in the everlasting arms of a Heavenly Father who loves us unconditionally than comes from dragging oneself up onto a pedestal in the misplaced hope of being admired by a stranger who doesn’t.
I am ordinary – it is God who is awesome. There is more satisfaction to be had in admiring God’s glory than imagining my own.
‘In [his] presence there is fullness of joy; at [his] right hand are pleasures forevermore.’ [Psalm 16:11]
Some reading this may imagine then that my advice to the broken hearted is a facile ‘Smile, Jesus loves you’. This is not the case. I am not so naive as to imagine that the pain and sorrow that some people experience can be swept away by such an insensitive platitude. Christian believers know just as much as anyone what it is to experience pain and sorrow. Jesus himself was described as ‘a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief’ [Isaiah 53:3]. I don’t doubt He cried out in agony as the nails were driven into his hands and feet. His crucifixion was no less painful for knowing he’d rise from the dead three days later. And Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. His tears were no less anguished for knowing that he would shortly bring Lazarus back from the dead.
The pain and sadness experienced by Christians is no less extreme than those who aren’t. Everybody hurts. And as for non–Christians, so for some Christians, the sadness is too much. The difference is that in the pain and in the sadness, the Christian does not grieve as those who have no hope. John Piper gives a helpful illustration. Imagine you are walking through a hospital and you hear screams of agony. How you feel about those screams will depend on whether you are on an oncology ward or a labour ward. The pain of childbirth may be no less severe than the pain of the patient suffering with terminal cancer but labour pains are accompanied with the hope of new life rather than the inevitability of death.
Right here, right now, pain and suffering abounds – your best life is not now. But there is hope that God will one day make all things well. The psalmist knew this. In Psalm 42 he writes:
‘My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”… I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”… Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?’.
But in his despair, he holds on to hope.
‘My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you… By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life… Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.’
Sometimes God does not act the way we ask him to, the way we would like. Leonard Cohen captures this wonderfully with his line describing ‘A million candles burning for the help that never came’. But when God disappoints us it is not because of a deficiency on his part. The truth is that just ‘as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are [God’s] ways higher than [our] ways’ [Isaiah 55:9]. God really does work in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Sometimes, what might look like foolishness to us is, in reality, a manifestation of God’s infinite wisdom. Take the cross for example. To the world the cross was nothing but defeat – the reality though was very different: Jesus was being glorified as he was lifted up on the cross.
We must then resist the temptation to take things at face value. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Faith trusts that in all the incomprehensibleness of life, all its sadness and turmoil, God really does know best. Furthermore faith continues to believe that he will keep his promises – promises that assure us that though weeping may tarry for the night, joy comes with the morning.
So take heart if you’re hurting today – everybody hurts sometimes. But nobody is ever ever alone.
‘The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all.’ [Psalm 34:18-19]
To read “Why do bad things happen to good people – a tentative suggestion”, click here
To read “Luther and the global pandemic – on becoming a theologian of the cross”, click here
To read ‘Covid -19. Does it suggest we really did have the experience but miss the meaning?’, click here. This is a slightly adapted version of “T.S. Eliot, Jesus and the Paradox of the Christian Life’.
I don’t suppose I ever imagined that I’d one day be indebted to Frank Skinner. This week, though, I find that I am, but it is not because of a few laughs from one of his comedy routines, nor for arguably the greatest football song of all time, ‘Three Lions on a Shirt’, first sung more than twenty four years ago which, incredibly, is now twenty four more ‘years of hurt’ than the original thirty. No, what I feel so grateful to him for is his introducing me, via ‘The Frank Skinner Poetry Podcast’, to a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins called The Windhover. It goes like this;
The Windhover
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
If you’re anything like me, somebody who would like to understand poetry but who, without help, seldom does, you might, at this point, be struggling. So was I. But having had my eyes and ears opened, it’s now coming home to me what a truly wonderful sonnet this is.
So what’s it all about and why do I fund myself loving it so much? Well, here’s the thing, and I should say I’m following Frank Skinner in what follows. At face value the sonnet is about somebody watching a falcon, a windhover, in flight. The opening lines describe the falcon as the highly favoured prince of the kingdom of the morning. The beautiful use of words mirror the beauty of this regal bird as it flies, masterfully occupying its place in the world. It’s a sight that stirs the observer’s heart, a heart that often conceals its feelings, and causes it to feel, and express, true wonder. The one who watches unmistakably delights in what they are seeing. They are in awe.
And then, in the second section of the sonnet, as the praise of the falcon reaches it apex, something changes. Everything stops with the word ‘buckle’. The dauphin has become a chevalier, a prince has become a knight. The bird who once was royalty, has now become one who serves, and in so doing, though more dangerous, has become more beautiful still.
Gerard Manley Hopkins dedicated ‘The Windhover’, by way of its subtitle, ‘To Christ our Lord’ and this helps us understand what is going on in the sonnet. Like the falcon, Christ is Lord of all, beautiful in his holiness, masterful in his kingdom. But, like the falcon, he buckled and became one who serves, a knight fighting on behalf of others, when he, like a bird of prey, descended to earth. And his humbling of himself is, itself, a thing of beauty that renders him a billion times more lovelier than he was before. Like the observer who, whilst delighting in the beauty of the falcon in flight, is filled with even greater awe seeing it in its descent, we too should marvel, not just at the glory of God displayed in the heavens, but even more so at the realisation that ‘the word became flesh and dwelt among us’ [John 1:14] There is glory to be seen in God in all his majestic divinity, but there is greater glory still to be seen in the realisation that, in Jesus, he became a man.
Which brings us to the last three lines of the poem. What a contrast! ‘Sillion’ is the name given to the shiny soil that is turned over by a plough, the result of back breaking labour, ‘sheer plod’. There is beauty in hard work and especially the work Jesus undertook on earth. And it is here that a beautiful switch occurs in the poem. It is no longer the falcon who is a picture of Christ, but rather Jesus is represented now by the falcon’s prey. The violent, goriness of the final line of the poem is surely reminiscent of the crucifixion with its mention of gall and gash, a wound of ‘gold-vermillion’, blood red yet infinitely precious.
And so in the poem we have the falcon as a metaphor for a God who, though gloriously majestic, supreme in the heavens, is also one who works, a suffering servant. Jesus is the one who, though fully God, became fully man and ultimately ‘humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross’. [Philippians 2:8]
And, paradoxically, it is this descent, this humiliation, that is ultimately a billion times more lovely and more dangerous. As Frank Skinner brilliantly puts it, ‘Humility is a super power. The grandeur of God is of course exciting, that is the big showbiz headline, but it is down and dirty and getting nails knocked in your hands where the real work of God happens’.
So, on seeing such glory, may our hearts also be stirred.
And as they are, just as the falcon buckled at the start of its descent, may we, at the start of ours, be pleased to buckle too. At the knee.
‘God has highly exalted [Jesus] and bestowed on him the name that is above every name’. Therefore ‘at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’ [Philippians 2:9-11]
So thank you Frank Skinner, thank you Gerard Manley Hopkins – and a thank you too, to The Windhover.
Do have a listen to Frank Skinner’s Poetry Podcast – and catch something of his enthusiasm for the poem. It really is well worth it.
For some thoughts, medical and theological, on ‘The Dry Salvages’ by T.S. Eliot see, ‘T.S.Eliot, Jesus and the Paradox of the Christian Life’ by clicking here
And for some thoughts, medical and theological, on ‘Enivrez vous’ by Charles Baudelaire see ‘Be Drunk‘ by clicking here
The folk down in Taunton Loved cricket a lot But Covid-19 Now it simply did NOT
Nor could it stand it when people had fun Watching the game as they sat in the sun
It did not like cricket, it’s sixes and fours It did not like cricket, it’s nail biting draws It did not like cricket, ball pitted ‘gainst bat It did not like Stumpy, nor Brian the cat
Though starting the season twelve points in arrears It wasn’t a reason for tantrums or tears ‘Cos nobody doubted, ‘twas no cause for worry We’d soon climb the table, past Essex and Surrey
Then Covid-19 it arrived in the land Cancelling all of the games that were planned Though one silver lining, by some it was said Came when ‘The Hundred’ was knocked on its head
That Coronavirus – it’s got such a nerve-er We’ll none of us now get to see van der Merwe No Overton J and no Overton C No Abel, no Davey, and no Louie G
The game can’t be played in the way that is peachy Crowding the bat when the ball is with Leachy Cos fielding is hard with corona’s insistence That players must all still maintain social distance
The floodlights this year then won’t light up the skies And hearts won’t be lifted by Hildy’s off drives Tom Banton won’t race to a fifty from twelve And dreams of the title we’ll just have to shelve
Though sadly for some, they must sit all alone Let’s fondly recall still. balls lost in the Tone And while, for our safety, we must hide away We’ll comfort ourselves with the odd cider day
Additional verses following the lifting of restrictions in the late summer of 2020:
And when this is over and Covid is gone When everything’s right and there’s nothing that’s wrong We’ll all meet again on some fine sunny day At the place we all love, for a full day of play
So Covid restrictions were lifted at last Allowing the games of Vitality Blast And though we weren’t there to cheer on our team Even at work we all watched the live stream
Goldsworthy, Babar and Davies and Smeed All did their best in the team’s hour of need But T20 glory was just not to be Despite all the efforts of Lammonby T
But how we would love now if only we could To be there in person at St James’ Wood To witness Tom Abell, the years final job Lifting the Trophy of a Willis named Bob
Though Covid-19 remains with us still Cricket goes on as it always will And it will not stop what we all long to see Somerset winning the BWT
Other half hearted attempts at comic poems:
To read ‘How the Grinch, and Covid, stole General Practices Christmas’, click here
And for ‘Twas the week before Christmas’, click here
‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’ [John 3:16]
Can I make a confession? For years John 3:16, one of the most famous and most treasured verses in the Bible, was one that I cared little for. Perhaps, like a hit record which is overplayed can go from being loved to loathed, I was over familiar with it having seen it once too many times plastered across some footballer’s vest and revealed as part of some goal scoring celebration. But, of course, I was wrong to feel this way. It truly is a remarkable verse, one that, when one thinks about it is really rather shocking, one that only a fool could possibly imagine they could have become over familiar with.
Consider this. If, as a stranger, I ran up to you and gave you my best wishes and hoped that you would have a really good day, how would you feel? You’d probably think it was a bit odd, not unwelcome perhaps, but certainly it would be somewhat unexpected.
But what if, when I ran up to you, you were being a bit of a vandal and setting my car on fire? How would you feel if, despite your actions, I told you not to worry, that I’d pay the cost to buy myself a new car and then continued to insist on offering you my best wishes and my hope that you would have a really good day?
Now what if, in addition to all that, I pulled out my chequebook and wrote you a cheque for £100 million pounds. How would you feel now?
And then imagine that you learnt that I had had to sell my most treasured possession, a castle I owned up in the Scottish highlands, in order to make the funds available and that I was now living on the streets as a consequence. Now how would you feel?
And finally what if you learnt that I was the King of England?
That would be a remarkable thing to have occurred. A shocking thing even. But it would be nothing compared to what we read of God’s love for us in John 3:16. Here’s why..
Firstly John 3:16 teaches us that God loves the world.
Now we should not take that for granted. There is no particular reason why God should love the world – it’s not as though the world has done anything particularly nice for God, something that he really appreciates and which has earned his love. Even so, God loves the world.
That in itself is remarkable.
But it’s more amazing than that. Because this verse also teaches us that God loves a world that will, if he doesn’t act as a result of his love, perish. And why would it perish – because of the judgement that God will inflict on the world because of its sinfulness. John 3:16 tells us however, that God loves the world despite it behaving in a way that he hates!
And that really is amazing!
But it’s even more amazing than that. God loves the world that behaves in a way that he hates, in such a way that, not only does he secure, for those who believe, salvation from eternal punishment, but also goes on to lavish them with great blessing. That is, he gives them eternal life.
What an amazing blessing!
But it gets even more amazing still. God loves this world, a world that behaves in a way that he hates, and changes the fate of those who believe from eternal punishment to eternal life, all at great personal cost to himself. He sends his only son, Jesus on a mission which is purposefully planned to end with his death, nailed and lifted up on a Roman cross so that we might look to him and be saved.
And let’s not forget who it is who is doing all this – none other than Almighty God
So you see, John 3:16 is a remarkable verse, a wonderful summary of the gospel. But before we leave it there it’s worth pointing out that the ‘so’ in ‘God so loved the world’ should not be understood to mean ‘how very much’ God loves the world. Though God does ‘sooooo’ love the world, the meaning here is God loves the world ‘like so’.
And this is where the dividing up into sections of our modern Bibles, whilst generally helpful, is less so. Because John 3:16 is here referring back to the previous verses, to John 3:14-15. There Jesus is explaining how, just as back in Numbers 21, Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so that any who had been bitten by a snake could look at it and be saved from death, so too Jesus, the Son of Man, would also be lifted up. He would be lifted up on the cross and, as a result, whoever looks to him would also be saved from death.
This is the way God loved the world. He loved it like so, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
There are those who teach, even within supposedly evangelical circles, that Jesus did not die a substitutionary death on our behalf. They even go so far as to suggest that were God to have laid on Jesus the punishment we deserved, he would have been guilty of ‘cosmic child abuse’. They suggest that Jesus’ death is merely a demonstration of his love for us. But it’s more than just that. As we frequently sing, ‘… on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied’. Jesus’ death satisfied God’s need for justice. God is a God of justice and if he is to be just our sin must be punished, either by Jesus bearing it on our behalf or, alternatively, by our having to bear it ourselves.
Jesus death is not just a demonstration of God’s love – it is in itself an act of love, one that achieves our salvation. our rescue. If I’m walking along the river with my wife and I turn to her and say ‘Darling, I love you so much and because I want to show you how much I love you I’m going to throw myself into the river’ – and then promptly proceed to do just that and drown, I am what is commonly known as an idiot! If however, as we walk along the riverbank she falls in and begins to drown, and I jump into rescue her but, in so doing, lose my own life, then I have acted out of love. I will have done a good thing though no where near as great a thing as the son of God who, of infinitely greater worth than I, died for those who were only deserving of death.
Lastly one other mistake we must be careful not to make is to say something foolish like you can tell how much God thinks we are worth on account of how much he was prepared to sacrifice to save us. God certainly values us, he loves us as his children, but he doesn’t love us because of our merits, rather, he loves us because he loves us. He loves us to make us lovely, to make us worthy objects of the love he already has for us, unworthy though we are. To say that Jesus died for us because we were worth dying for is to talk, as Luther would have said, like a ‘theologian of glory’ and would be tantamount to a denial of grace. We should think like one of Luther’s ‘theologians of the cross’ and see how God paid there, not the market price for our salvation but rather a ludicrously high price for us, not because we are so wonderful but because he is so gracious, not because we are so lovely, but because he is so loving. To say that he paid what we are worth would be the equivalent of some gangster bragging of his worth on account of the high value of the reward that was being offered for his capture. Rather than indicative of his worth, that price would reflect the seriousness of his crimes. And so it is with the crucifixion of Jesus, that was the price that was required to save us, so great is our sinfulness.
And that is why John 3:16 is such a famous verse, one that is rightly treasured by so many and one with which we can not possibly become over familiar. Because it truly is amazing, that God really did so love the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
It has now been acknowledged that the coronavirus can effect our sense of taste and smell, but it should also be recognised that it can effect our sense of perspective too, causing us to pay far too much attention to things that are not of sufficient importance to warrant it. Not that that is anything new.
In the preface to his book critiquing the effect of television on our culture, Neil Postman compares the concerns of George Orwell in ‘1984’ with those of Aldous Huxley in ‘Brave New World’. He writes:
‘What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture’
What is particularly astonishing is the fact that Postman’s book was written in 1985, long before the exponential rise in the number of TV channels and the dawn of Facebook and Twitter which together have only served to confirm Postman’s view that Huxley, not Orwell, was right. It is not religion, as Marx asserted in 1843, that has become the opium of the masses but rather it is entertainment that numbs us to what is real and valuable. It was for good reason that Postman’s book was entitled, ‘Amusing ourselves to Death’.
The truth is that we will all die as a consequence of our sin. The world seeks to distract us from that fact by filling our minds with things of negligible value compared to the infinite worth of a God who can save us from the very thing we long to forget.
A week does not go by without some new ‘must see’ televisual feast being presented before us to distract and lift us from our otherwise supposedly tedious lives. Of course there is, for example, nothing inherently wrong about watching the endeavours of a dozen amateur cooks but does ‘The Great British Bake Off’ really warrant the attention it generates in our newspapers each year when a new series begins. Thoroughly enjoyable though it is, our lives would not be so very diminished if we never saw another disappointing signature bake, another plucky attempt at a technical challenge, or another triumphant showstopper.
To be entertained is in danger of becoming our ‘raison d’ete‘. To simply be amused, a word, incidentally, that means to be devoid of thought, must not become the goal of our existence. The truth is that there is a God, one by whom we were created to both know and delight in, but, just as a world that doubts the goodness and ability of God to provide and protect his people looks elsewhere for their security, so a world that doubts the very presence of God looks elsewhere for satisfaction.
Increasingly sportsmen have become those we should all aspire to be like. And when sport and television combine, as they do for example during the Olympics, we are all too easily persuaded that there is nothing more important than how fast someone can pedal a pushbike, nothing more amazing than someone doing a head over heels, and nothing more thrilling than someone jumping into a pool of water. Now don’t get me wrong, though not as much as a day at the cricket, I have missed watching the Olympics this year as much as the next person, but we simply mustn’t buy into the assertion that it has any ultimate importance.
What we glory in reflects what we consider most important. And so we must all ask ourselves what or who it is that we glory in – what, or who, it is that absorbs our attention. The reality is that it is God who is of ultimate importance and we are to fix our eyes on Jesus, not the latest comings and goings on Strictly Come Dancing.
Jeremiah 9:23-24 reads:
‘Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’
To ‘boast’ here does not mean to brag – it is not that we should brag about the fact we know something about God. On the contrary, if we know anything about God at all it is down to the graciousness of God in revealing himself to us. Rather to boast here is ‘to value’, ‘to consider important’, ‘to take delight in’. Here then is a warning to us as to what we should glory in.
Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches.
We could go on.
Let not the tennis player boast in the accuracy of their serve,
Let not the gymnast boast in their agility
Let not the sprinter boast in their speed.
And less you consider that none of this refers to us, or perhaps that I am jealous of those more athletic than me, let’s bring it a little closer to home.
Let not the clinician boast in their clinical acumen
Let not the craftsmen boast in the work of their hands
Let not the welfare advisor boast in the sensitivity of their counsel.
And neither let the Christian boast in the success of their ministry,
No, let him who boasts, boast in this
Let him who values anything, value this, delight in this, consider this important:
That he understands and knows God, that he understands and knows that He is the LORD, who practices steadfast love, justice and righteousness in the earth, and that in these things He delights.
We are to value the fact that we know God and delight in those aspects of his character that He himself delights in. To know God is the meaning of our lives, the true purpose of our existence. Praise God that it is so – for only knowing God can satisfy the longings of our hearts.
The sporting endeavours of ourselves or others will not satisfy our souls
The lightness of any Victoria Sponge ever baked will not satisfy our souls.
Even the joys we may experience at work or home will never ultimately satisfy our souls.
But knowing God will.
Augustine of Hippo wrote in his Confessions;
‘Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee’
Augustine was right. This is no great surprise since his words were simply echoing those of Jesus who said in John 17:3
‘…this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’
To know God then is to live – to truly exist – to have eternal life. It is the whole point of our existence. What a privilege it is, therefore, to have been brought into the family of the triune God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. What an honour it is to be called by our Heavenly Father, the sovereign creator and sustainer of the universe. And what a joy it is to have his Spirit with us, speaking to us through his word. Oh that we might have ears to hear from Him, that we might know him better.
So in these days of pandemic let’s not spend too long attending to the news, God’s story really is bigger news than anything we’ll find reported there. And let’s not allow ourselves to be distracted from all the bad news by the ‘bread and circuses’ that are continually offered to us but which never succeed in satisfying. Rather than amusing ourselves to death with yet another box set on Netflix, endless amusing cat videos on Facebook or, even, one more work out with Jo Wicks in the mistaken belief that a healthier body will bring us ultimate satisfaction, let’s be as we ought, different from the world, and find instead contentment in the God who is there. Let’s not doubt his presence or his ability, not only to provide and protect us, but also to truly satisfy us.
For ‘some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.’ [Psalm 20:7]. ‘[He] make[s] known to [us] the path of life; in [his] presence there is fullness of joy; at [his] right hand are pleasures forevermore’ [Psalm 16:11]. Therefore, let us fix, or even feast, our eyes on Jesus, ‘the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross’ [Hebrews 12:2]. For he is ‘the image of the invisible God’ [Colossians 1:15]. In seeing and knowing Jesus we see and know the Father, and to know God, as already mentioned, is eternal life [John 17:3].
It is not in ourselves, therefore, that we should boast but rather in Jesus Christ, in his character and what he achieved on the cross. ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ [James 4:6]. May it be, therefore, ‘far from [us] to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to [us], and [we] to the world’ [Galatians 6:14].
Because to know God really is enough. His grace is sufficient for us [2 Corinthians 12:9] and ‘godliness with contentment is great gain’. [1 Timothy 6:6].
So then, even in these days of great difficulty, may we grow in godliness. And, as we do, may we all know contentment, may we all know great gain, and may we all know his amazing grace.
O LORD, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul, “There is no salvation for him in God.” Selah
But you, O LORD, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. I cried aloud to the LORD, and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah
I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the LORD sustained me.
I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.
Arise, O LORD! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked.
Salvation belongs to the LORD; your blessing be on your people! Selah
Psalm 3
How, I wonder, did you sleep last night. Did you sleep well?
It’s common for those who are anxious or under stress to find it difficult to get a good nights sleep, so it’s no surprise that some of us have found it difficult to sleep during the coronavirus pandemic. Unsettled by all that is changing about us, uncertain of what the future might hold and fearful perhaps even of death, the nights for some have on occasions been long.
In Psalm 3 David is under stress. His son Absalom has led an uprising against him and has even plotted to have him killed. David has had to flee and as he has done so he has had to listen to the taunts of those who oppose him, taunts which suggest that God is no longer for him. David however knows better. He knows God is his shield, the lifter of his head. Knowing that God will protect him and knowing he will not be put to shame, David cries out to God. And God answers.
And as a result, despite all his difficulties, David is able to sleep, knowing that God sustains him as he does so.
Because of the protection he is confident God will give, David will not fear his enemies. He doesn’t doubt that God will deal with them, that he will both shame them and disarm them. David knows salvation belongs to the Lord.
And so it is with us. Daily we face difficulties, especially in this time of pandemic. We may feel overwhelmed by them and struggle as others, perhaps, look on and question how we can still trust in a God who, from their point of view, seems to have abandoned us. But we know different. Because, as we too cry out to God, he answers us in the promises he has made, the promises we find in the Bible. And so, with the shield of faith, we can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one [Ephesians 6:16].
Because the truth is that, no matter what our circumstances might be, God is for us. And ‘if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?’ [Romans 8:31-32] We can be absolutely confident ‘that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. [Romans 8:38-39]
Knowing these things will help us, like David, to sleep at night. Like him, we can be sure that God will sustain us too.
But whilst Psalm 3 is a ‘Psalm of David’, written ‘when he fled from Absalom his son’, it is, at the same time, a psalm about another, greater, king. Like David, King Jesus was rejected by his own people and was taunted by those who saw him as one who was beyond salvation. As Jesus hung on the cross he was derided by those who passed by ‘wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” [Mark 15:29-30]. Unlike David however, Jesus was not spared death – but, even so, death could not hold him. Though he laid down and died, God did not let his ‘holy one see corruption’ [Psalm 16:10]. God sustained him too, even in death, and on the third day Jesus rose again.
And the same will be true for us. As, for the time being at least, the death rate from coronavirus begins to fall, we may be beginning to feel a little more confident that these days will pass. No doubt, in time, they will. But, even if we do not succumb to Covid-19, we will all still one day die. Even so, as the verses above remind us, not even death can separate us from the love of God. On occasions in the New Testament Jesus describes those who are dead as merely sleeping. And no wonder. For when we do die, we can be confident that, to Jesus, it will be no more difficult to raise us as it would be to wake us from sleep. And so just as he did with the ruler’s daughter in Matthew 9, he will but take our hand or, perhaps, just as he did with Lazarus in John 11, he will but call our name, and we will be raised. God will sustain us, even in death.
And so, just as he did with David’s enemy, God has shamed and disarmed our enemies. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death. [1 Corinthians 15:26]. And because of the cross, ‘death has been swallowed up in victory’ [1 Corinthians 15:54]. We who were dead in our sin, God has ‘made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.’ And in so doing ‘He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him’. [Colossians 2:13-15]. With sin dealt with, death has indeed lost its sting. It has been disarmed and finally been rendered truly powerless.
So we can sleep soundly because the God who keeps us neither slumbers or sleeps [Psalm 121:2-3]. And when our time comes, we will be able to rest in peace because we are those who ‘rely not on ourselves but on the God who raises the dead’. [2 Corinthians 1:9]. Salvation really does belong to the LORD, and his blessing really is on his people.
So tonight, knowing all this, may we all know what it is to sleep well!
‘Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. [1 John 3:2-3]
These really are wonderful verses.
On account of God’s great love, we are his children now. That is what we ‘already’ are. Even so, we are ‘not yet’ what we should be – that is like Jesus. Even so ‘dear friends’ we should not despair, for we have a hope which purifies us.
For the more we look to Jesus, the more we will look like Jesus. And the more we see what Jesus is like, the more like Jesus we shall be seen to be. And when we finally see him fully, then we will finally be fully like him.
We are ‘already’ children of God but we are ‘not yet’ perfect.
Jesus appeared to take away our sins [1 John 3:5]. He did this by dying on the cross for us, paying the penalty for all our wrong doing. But, for now, indwelling sin continues to reside in each one of us. And so, we who are his must, by the power of the Holy Spirit, keep on putting to death the deeds of the body in order that we will live. [Romans 8:13]. The struggle continues – daily, and proves that we are spiritually alive because the Holy Spirit dwells in us.
But when he appears again, when he finally appears, he will complete the good work he has begun, and we will finally and forever be, what we were always meant to be without sin. We really will be just like Jesus.
So until then, rather than looking only at the world situation, let us instead fix our eyes on Jesus, who is not only the author, but also the perfecter of our faith. Because it is by looking to Jesus that we are saved.
Soli deo gloria.
———————————————————
On Sunday evening we heard news of the first tentative steps that might be made towards an easing of the current lockdown restrictions. But there is a long way to go. We may be moving slowly in the right direction already, but we are not yet fully there.
The passage in 1 John above highlights for me the theological idea of the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’, an idea that I have found hugely helpful in recent years.
We live in the tension between the ages – that is we are saved, we are being saved and we will be saved – the kingdom is coming, has come and will come. We are not yet fully what we will be, not yet fully where we are heading – but we are on our way.
But, unlike the national situation in which we are tentatively treading towards a complete lifting of restrictions, the fact that we will one day obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God [Romans 8:21] is absolutely guaranteed. Indeed, so certain is it that, though we do not yet experience it, we can already consider it ours.
God works by his Spirit, through his word – he has the power to create by his command. When he speaks, reality changes. He created the universe by a word of command. ‘God said let there be light and there was light’. Jesus raised Lazarus by a word of command. ‘Lazarus, come out ‘and the dead man came out, alive.
God’s word is so powerful and his promises are so sure that, there is a sense in which, when God promises something it becomes an instant reality. The promise is ‘already’ true, even though the full realisation of that promise is still ‘not yet’.
In the Bible, this idea of ‘the already and the not yet’, is a recurring theme. It is a very helpful concept which explains how God can declare something as true even when the current experiences of those he says those things to, may seem very different. And because there is nothing more true than what God says, because God’s promises are so certain and because God creates through what he says, when God declares something to be so, there is a sense in which it is simultaneously both ‘already’ true, even when it is ‘not yet’ true.
Hence the ‘already and the not yet’.
Having decreed something, a process then begins by which what is true by God’s decree becomes true in actuality. A couple of examples may help.
Gideon for example is quivering in the wine press when God declares him to be a mighty warrior. Now if God says you are a mighty warrior you are a mighty warrior irrespective of how you feel. And yet Gideon is quivering in the wine press – he’s far from a mighty warrior. There then follows a process by which we see Gideon becoming just what God told him he was at the outset. At the time of God’s decree, Gideon was both already and not yet a mighty warrior – In time he became what he already was.
Similarly God renamed Abram as Abraham saying I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. Abraham, however, given he was childless at the time, was not the father of many nations when God said that he was. Once again however, there followed a process by which we see Abraham becoming what God had already declared him to be. Abraham became what he already was.
So why is this important for us?
Because the same is true for us.
God declares us to be a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. And so we are – the only problem is that each and every one of us is also far from holy, we are all those who continue to sin. But if you are someone who, like me, is all too conscious of their indwelling sinfulness and oftentimes weak faith, someone who sometimes finds themselves asking ‘Can I really be a Christian?’, take heart, whilst not encouraging complacency, I would suggest that we are simply ‘not yet what we already are’!
God has declared us to be right with him. We are ‘justified’ solely because of what Jesus has done for us. And if God says you are not guilty, then you really are ‘Not guilty’. God treats us just as if we had never sinned and just as if we had always obeyed. We are righteous, acceptable before God now – because God says we are. And yet, at the same time, we are still sinners.
Martin Luther was right. He had an expression ‘simul Justus et peccator’ – meaning we are both just and sinful at the same time.
Counted righteous already, we are now in the process of becoming what God already declares us to be. That is the road map that we are on. We are being sanctified. Every one of us will die as a sinner, as one who sins – but if we are Christians, if our faith is in what Christ has done for us, we will die as justified sinners, those who, though they continue to sin, have, none the less, begun the process of sanctification – that process by which we become more like Jesus.
And God will complete the good work he has begun in us – because he has promised to – and one day, on the day of Jesus Christ we will rise again with a perfect resurrection body. Then, and only then, we will fully be what God already declares us to be today.
We will have become what we already are. All restrictions will then have been lifted and, since the Son will have set us free, we really will will be free indeed’ [John 8:36]
A few further reflections written in the days if Covid-19
MAGNIFYING THE LORD
Oh, magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together!’ [Psalm 34:3]
I wonder what it is that we are currently most preoccupied by, what it is that most fills our minds.
The majority of us, no doubt, will be all too aware of a certain virus that has been getting a lot of airtime recently. In contrast, it is significant how few column inches have been given over to the things of God.
For sure, over the Easter weekend, there was some reporting regarding how churches have responded to the current pandemic but, in terms of what God himself is actually doing, I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that the news channels have been completely silent.
Of course none of us are surprised by this but we too need to guard against making the same mistake as the media and allowing ourselves to think and read more about Coronavirus than we do about God.
The Bible not infrequently talks about magnifying the Lord. But how are we to do this? Are we really called to make God bigger than he already is?
John Piper helpfully guides our thinking when he points out that we can magnify things in two ways – with a microscope and a telescope.
A microscope is used to make something that is small look bigger than it really is. Whilst this has value when examining those things too small for us to see unassisted, this is not the way we should magnify God.
A telescope, on the other hand, brings into view things that, though they may appear small to the naked eye, are actually very big. They enable us to see things as they really are. This is how we should magnify God.
Many see God, if they acknowledge his existence at all, as of little importance in their daily lives. But the truth is very different. By magnifying God, drawing attention to him by the way we speak and act, continuing to trust and hope in Him even in times that are difficult, we play our part in helping others see him as the ‘great big God’ he really is.
The media magnifies the Covid-19 virus as with a microscope, making it all important. It is, of course, of some significance – after all it might, if it pleases God to do so, be the cause of our death. But it is, nonetheless, infinitesimally small, both in size and in significance when compared with God.
God however, the one who, if we do die in the coming weeks, will most certainly raise us to life, is infinitely large. And of infinite significance too. So let’s be preoccupied by him, let’s be ‘looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.’ [Hebrews 12:2].
Because that is the reality. Our Heavenly Father really is far more worthy of our attention, and that of all those with whom we interact, than anything else. Let’s make that apparent today.
So come, ‘magnify the LORD with me and let us exalt his name together!’
JESUS WEPT
‘Jesus wept’
John 11:35 is, famously, the shortest verse in the Bible. And yet these two words contain so much that is helpful in these days when daily we are told of far too many people dying. Here are just three things we can learn.
1. Jesus is somebody who cares. He weeps for the death of his friend Lazarus and, no doubt, at the sadness his loss has caused all those who also loved him. Jesus weeps with those who weep’ [Romans 12:15]. It’s good to know that our God is not a remote deity who lacks compassion but a loving Heavenly Father who comes alongside us in our sadness. Jesus, I believe, still weeps, daily at the news of all those who have died of Coronavirus.
2. Jesus’ tears reassure us that it’s right for us to weep too, that Christianity isn’t a religion of the stiff upper lip in which grief is dismissed with insensitive assertions that ‘all things work together for the good’ [Romans 8:28] even though that is gloriously true for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. In 1 Thessalonians 4:13 Paul writes in order that his readers ‘may not grieve as others do who have no hope.’ With these words he says we are to grieve, but that we should grieve hopefully. No doubt Jesus knew as he wept that he would soon raise Lazarus back to life. He grieved, but not as one who had no hope. As the Covid-19 death toll climbs we should weep, but weep with hope. Because there will be better days.
3. As Jesus weeps, not only did he know that he would raise Lazarus, but that he himself would soon die. He knew that his raising of Lazarus from the dead would be the act which would provoke those who opposed him so vehemently to start making their plans to put him to death. [John 11:53]. Their hardness of heart must also have saddened Jesus and, quite possibly, added to his tears. Jesus knew that the cost of raising Lazarus to life would be his own death. But it wasn’t just the cost of raising Lazarus to life that was paid for the day that Jesus was crucified. It was the price that had to be paid to guarantee our own resurrection too, even if that death occurs during this current pandemic.
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” [John 11:25]. This is wonderfully true, and it is this truth that will enable us to grieve hopefully, sustaining us, not only when those we love die but also as we approach our own death too.
Regardless of the cause of death, Coronavirus or cancer, old age or accident, there will still be a place for tears, our own, those who love us, and, if John 11:35 teaches us anything, those of Jesus too. But these tears will come to an end – because Jesus wept that we might know eternal joy – he died that we might have everlasting life.
ON NOT NEGLECTING TO GATHER TOGETHER
One of the distinctive aspects of Christianity is the belief that, after death, we have more to look forward to than a merely spiritual existence.
To know that there will be a bodily resurrection, that, like Jesus himself, we will be made up of flesh and blood after we too are raised from the dead, is, in these days of social isolation, very good news. Because don’t we all miss that real life contact with others.
Whilst Skype, Zoom and the rest of the internet’s many ways of meeting virtually have their merits, merits for which we can all be grateful for allowing the degree of interaction they do, such interaction is, nonetheless, not the same as meeting together physically.
When one is finding life difficult it is good to know that someone is thinking about you, but it is better still to have someone physically with you, someone who is, literally, there for you. Similarly, whilst lovers who are separated may draw comfort from the letters they send each other, so much more precious, on account of their tangibility, than emails, bits of paper are nonetheless a poor substitute for being together in person.
In order for relationships to be all that they are supposed to be, there needs to be physical contact. That’s why we kiss, a physical act of love as well as a sign of that love. Even more so, the act of marriage, that sign and seal of the covenant relationship by which the Bible tells us two people unite to become one flesh, is an intensely physical act which cannot be undertaken whilst apart.
Which is why we must not get too used to virtual church. During the current lock down, most churches are currently offering some form of online service. This is a good and valuable endeavour, one which can offer much in difficult circumstances. But we must not mistake it for real church.
Real church, functioning as it should, involves the physical gathering together of God’s people. It’s not something that can be properly done apart. Like lovers who make weekly phone calls to one another, we should long to meet again on a Sunday morning, to know the intimacy that comes when we gather together as the body of Christ.
That’s why Hebrews 10:25 warns us to not neglect meeting together. Though we may not be able to do so at present, we should find ourselves missing that fellowship and eagerly looking forward to the day when we will once more be together. We should be longing to gather round the Lord’s table again, to participate in the physical act of the Lord’s supper. Breaking bread together and sharing the cup with one another, is a physical act. It is as we eat and drink the tangible that we experience the sign and seal of God’s love for us and together know intimate communion with Christ.
We were created to be in physical relationship with one another. No wonder then the depth of grief we feel when we are bereaved. But when we die, or when one who we love is taken, we can be comforted by the knowledge that the pain of separation that we will then feel so intensely, will be but temporary. One day we will be reunited and be able to physically hold one another once more.
‘Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. [1 Corinthians 15:51-52]
Our eternal future does not consist of our floating around in some disembodied form of ourselves. Ours will not be some virtual existence, a simulation of what we know today, On the contrary, what will be will be more real than what we currently experience. Though, at present, our outer self is daily wasting away [2 Corinthians 4:16], when we are raised Jesus Christ ‘will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body’ [Philippians 3:21]. We will have new bodies, bodies that are better than those we have at present and which, by virtue of their imperishability, will remain so for ever.
Just as when the current restrictions now preventing our meeting together are lifted, so too the restrictions imposed by death will only be temporarily. We will fellowship together once more. And so we look forward even now to gathering together, ‘a great multitude that no one [can] number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages’ [Revelation 7:9]
And what is more, not only will we be together, we will, on that great day, stand before the Lamb. We will forever be together with the Lord. [1 Thessalonians 4:17].
WAITING PATIENTLY
Though the lockdown restrictions are now gradually beginning to be eased, it’s going to be a while longer before they are lifted completely. We’re just going to have to be patient.
What an encouragement it is then to read Psalm 40, especially for those who, despite knowing they are saved, continue to find life a struggle. Because, whilst it is a psalm of King David and, therefore, one that serves to point us forward to Christ, it is also a psalm that reflects our story too.
As Christians, even though we can rejoice that we have been lifted out of the miry pit and had our feet set on a rock (v2), even though we can sing that new song that has been put in our mouth (v3), and even though we are greatly blessed as a result of having put our trust in God (v4), even so, troubles without number still surround us (v12).
That they do so does not question the reality of the salvation that we already have. We have been saved but there is still a need for us to go on being saved. Furthermore God in his sovereignty is sometimes pleased to lovingly send difficulty to those who are his, even those whose walk with Him is the closest. Consider Job. It was precisely because there was ‘none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fear[ed] God and turn[ed] away from evil’ [Job 1:8] that he was singled out as the one that Satan was permitted to torment.
Though, like Job, we may not understand the difficulties we have to face, we can be sure that, because our loving Heavenly Father allows them to come our way, ultimately they are always for our good. And we need not doubt that one day we will know what it is to be fully saved because Jesus Christ is able to ‘save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.’ [Hebrews 7:25] The truth is that, in addition to this pandemic eventually coming to an end, we can be sure that everything that is currently wrong will one day be made forever right. Because poor and needy though we may find ourselves this morning, the Lord still thinks of us (v17). Even as he prays those prayers that still we all so badly need.
And so, despite the difficulties we currently experience and the sadness we continue to know, let us, confident of our future, rejoice and be glad in him today (v16), let us speak of his righteousness, faithfulness and love (v10) and may he be exalted (v14) as we wait patiently for the LORD.
For he will hear our cry (v1).
START SPREADING THE NEWS
One of the factors upon which great store is put by those seeking to advise on how best to manage the current coronavirus pandemic is the so called reproduction number, R. It is a measure of disease transmission that refers to the average number of secondary infections produced by a single infected person. When R is below 1, the number of people infected will reduce whilst, when it is above 1, that number will increase. The current requirement to self isolate when one has symptoms, and practice social distancing when one hasn’t, is an attempt to reduce the value of R and with it the number of coronavirus cases. Another factor is the existence of so called super spreaders, those folk who, for whatever reason, are particularly effective in passing on the virus, infecting more people than most.
Now, whilst none of us wish to be those who spread Covid-19, we should all be those who desire to spread the word of God and ‘infect’ others with the good news of Jesus. Because, compared to merely contracting the coronavirus, it is a far more dangerous thing for us not to hear God speak. Proverbs 29:18 tells us that, ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’. The nature of the Hebraic parallelism employed in the rest of the verse makes clear that, by ‘vision’, the writer means God’s word, a view that is made clearer still by verses like 1 Samuel 3:1 where we read ‘And the word of the LORD was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision’.
When it comes to passing on the gospel, I wonder what the value of R is for us. In the early church it was certainly above 1. In the book of Acts we read that in those days there was a bold proclamation of the gospel. And as a result ‘the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem’ [Acts 6:7].
A big part of the book of Acts is the story of how the word of God spread. We read of how ‘the word of God increased and multiplied’ [Acts 12:24], how ‘the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region’ [Acts 13:49], and of how ‘the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily’. [Acts 19:20]. That same word must continue to spread, to increase and prevail mightily, today.
This week a government minister said that one of the reasons that churches needed to remain closed was because of the concern that the exhalation involved in the singing of hymns posed an increased risk of virus spread. If, then, the exhalation involved as we exalt the Lord as we sing on Sundays can spread the coronavirus, how much more can we spread the gospel if we exalt the Lord as we daily exhale in speech?
‘We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.’ [2 Corinthians 5:20]. What an amazing privilege! When we proclaim the gospel, God is speaking through us. And as we speak, God will, by his Holy Spirit, ensure that his word does not return to him void. ‘For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall [God’s] word be that goes out from [his] mouth; it shall not return to [him] empty, but it shall accomplish that which [he] purpose[s], and shall succeed in the thing for which [he] sent it.’ [Isaiah 55:10-11].
God works by his Spirit through his word. As his word is spoken, God, by his spirit breaths new life into those he is pleased to give it. Just as when ‘the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature’ [Genesis 2:7], so it is ‘with everyone who is born of the Spirit’ [John 3:8]. God breathes new life into those who were dead in their ‘trespasses and sins’ [Ephesians 2:1]. ‘In [Christ] you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit’ [Ephesians 1:13]. If others are to experience the same new birth that Jesus says we all must, then it will be a result of the Holy Spirit bringing it about as the gospel is spoken.
Whether or not somebody ‘catches’ the word is up to the Holy Spirit but we are called to be “contagious’ by exposing others to that word. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were ‘super spreaders’?. But if we are going to be those who ‘infect’ others with the gospel, we are, like those in the early church, going to have to use words because it is through words that Jesus is seen today. His beauty is displayed when we hear his voice, when we read his word or hear it preached. In Corinthians 4:4 Paul tells of how the light of the gospel displays the glory of Christ. Whilst the world says that ‘seeing is believing’, since ‘faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.’ [Romans 10:17], and given that ‘faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’ [Hebrews 11:1], the truth is that ‘hearing is believing’. ‘We walk by faith, not by sight’ [2 Corinthians 5:7].
So let’s speak so that others might see and walk by faith too. Let’s seek to be highly contagious, to be those super spreaders. And let’s look to get our reproduction number up and pray that we might see ‘the Lord [adding] to [our] number day by day those who [are] being saved.’ [Acts 2:47]
Jesus commissioned us to ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation’ [Mark 16:15].
Let’s start spreading the news,
Let’s be leaving today.
Let’s be a part of it.
For further reflections see ‘Faith in the time of Coronavirus – 1’ by clicking here
A global response to a global pandemic is always going to struggle to deliver care tailored to an individual’s specific needs and preferences, and a generic approach to Covid-19 has been, therefore, unavoidable. Nevertheless, whilst top down protocols have necessarily been put in place to deal with what is after all a new and deadly disease, and whilst we shouldn’t beat ourselves up on account of it, it needs to be acknowledged that what is best medical advice for populations is not always the best advice for individuals. Because individuals are more than just their physiological make up.
Furthermore, and inevitably when responding so rapidly to something so unknown, not all advice has turned out to be good. So many opinions have been expressed as to what should or should not be done in response to Covid-19 that it has sometimes been difficult to discern what should be taken on board immediately and what should be viewed with caution. This was especially true in those early days when advice was changing so rapidly. What is more, whilst it’s been hard enough to familiarise oneself to a novel disease whilst simultaneously adopting to new ways of working, its been harder still to apply all that to individuals according to their particular needs, especially when, as well as being concerned for those we are to care for, we have been concerned for our own and our family’s welfare.
We have all wanted to be purveyors of the best advice to our patients but some of what has been shouted loudest has been best ignored, or at least not attended to until a little more information has become available. Time, though, has not always been on our side, and decisions have had to be made at pace. And so, as a result, though there have been times when changes have of necessity been made wonderfully quickly, there have also been times when changes have best been avoided.
None of this should allow us to think that we no longer need to try to treat patients as the individuals they are, to do so is the one thing that general practice is genuinely ideally positioned to do. But, given all of the above, it is no surprise that in these exceptional circumstances this has had to be compromised a little. Even so, we have, I think, along with the overwhelmingly excellent support of our patients, managed to maintain personal care as well as has been humanly possible.
The main thing has been to keep the main thing the main thing.
But what the main thing is, has also been open to debate. Covid-19 is without doubt a thing, a huge thing, perhaps even, temporarily at least, the main thing. But it isn’t the only thing. And if it is the main thing, then it must not be allowed to remain the main thing for longer than it ought.
Furthermore, whilst we have all been concerned about minimising loss of life, we need to accept that, however strongly we hold our point of view, how that main thing is best achieved in the long run is still not entirely clear – and may not become so for some time yet.
What is certain though is that whilst there have been some who have been unduly cavalier in their attitude towards the pandemic, there are others who have massively overestimated their personal risk of coming to significant harm. Many, in their understandable desire to stay alive, have stopped living any sort of life at all and have found themselves isolated from everything that makes their lives meaningful. And that’s not good. I don’t suppose I’m the only one who has found themselves trying to help patients put coronavirus into some kind of perspective.
Life must, and will, go on, with or without coronavirus, and, as we all know, there is more to life than merely staying alive. And therein lies the thing that I believe will always truly be the genuinely main thing.
Contradicting emotions have been experienced simultaneously.
Who hasn’t managed, having felt overwhelmingly anxious one minute, to convince themselves the next that everything just might be OK after all? Who hasn’t felt distressed by all that has been going on, yet been cheered by working in teams made up of individuals who remain a joy to work with? And who hasn’t mourned the daily death toll, and our colleagues who have been lost to Covid-19, yet rejoiced at news of those who have survived?
I hope we have all known some happiness in all the sadness. Perhaps you’ve known what it is to smile, even as you’ve cried.
And finally,
We have all needed to hope.
Amazing though it is, working within the NHS causes one to see its limitations and the need for something greater in which to place one’s hope, something that really can carry us through this crises. Perhaps that’s why so many of us, though appreciative of the appreciation, are uneasy each Thursday evening as the country applauds us and other key workers. We know we’re not enough. Our hope is not simply that we’ll be up to the task, we know we may not be, but that all of this will come to an end and some semblance of normality will eventually be restored.
And when it does, as it surely one day will, my hope is that General Practice, though perhaps taking hold of some of the new ways of working developed over the last few weeks, won’t lose what has always been at its heart and makes family medicine the special thing it is. And that thing is, and will always remain, the doctor-patient relationship – the cornerstone on which the whole of general practice depends – built on trust, nurtured through adversity and established over time, significant amounts of time, spent together, in the same room.
Because, if I’m honest, despite how amazingly well general practice has contributed to the cause, I’m beginning to miss that, now that that’s beginning to go….
For the original blog ‘I’ll miss this when we’re gone’ click here
Recently I went to see ‘Stan and Ollie’, the film about Laurel and Hardy. There’s a scene towards the end of the film, when Hardy says to Laurel ‘I’ll miss this when we’re gone’. He speaks the words, indicating his eagerness to finish the show with the dance routine that, due to his heart disease, he knows, from a solely medical point of view, he is unwise to perform.
Oliver Hardy knows it’s not just his career with Stan Laurel that is drawing to a close – it’s also his life. What he chooses to do though is not simply based upon the notion that one should live only for the moment. Mindful of the future, the sadness he will feel, and recalling the past, the joy he has known, he makes a decision in the present. Hoping not to be left with the sadness of regret – he dances.
It’s a bittersweet moment. The sadness is extenuated by the joy, the joy extenuated by the sadness. It made me smile – as I cried.
It reminded me of four things:
Not all good advice is good advice for all.
There are some things more important than one’s health – the value of a life is not measured by its length. In our efforts to extend life we must not deprive our patients the opportunity to live. Sometimes we need to say to our patients that they’d be well advised to pay no heed to what we doctors tell them And sometimes we have to be wise enough to interpret what conventional medical wisdom means for those to whom we pass it on. Because even good advice is sometimes best ignored.
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
Neither we, nor our patients, need yet more guidelines focusing in on every symptom that is experienced with the demand that each is managed perfectly. Though following guidelines may make us all feel safer, they risk leaving us trapped in a very small corner of the here and now. Too much attention to problems can give them undue prominence in our consciousness and risks diminishing our lives more than is necessary. This is even more true when the problems are only risk factors – that is, merely potential problems.
Similarly, neither we nor our patients need any more spurious health scares. Though, as a consequence, undertaking a precipitous and wholesale change to our medical practice may give us a momentary sense of satisfaction that current advice is being followed, we will be left too busy to alter the things that genuinely matter today and thus delay any movement towards a truly better tomorrow. We need to keep in mind the bigger picture and focus on what’s most important. Colluding with patients that with the right combination of pills and careful attention to lifestyle death will be avoided is dishonest and, as Oliver Hardy perhaps understood, detrimental to all our chances of enjoying the life we have now.
Contradictory emotions can be experienced simultaneously
We can not deny the existence of sadness – on the contrary it’s inevitability is universal. Furthermore, we cannot know what happiness really is without knowing the pain of sorrow – and sorrow requires the memory of the temporary nature of happiness. If, then, we are to be happy, it must be alongside our sadness. We dare not wait for the absence of sorrow before allowing ourselves to be happy. It is not that we can not be happy because we know sadness, nor that we can not be sad because there are things to be happy about. Paradoxically, we can be happy and sad at the same time. Life isn’t merely about being happy. We can smile – even as we cry.
Similarly we can have a healthy appreciation of life despite serious ill health. We can live well, maybe even dance, despite our approaching death. Life is not black or white, it’s a kaleidoscope of grey. We would do well to see the light in the darkness.
Unlike Oliver Hardy, too many people, won’t miss this life when they’re gone. Merely keeping people alive and healthy shouldn’t be our sole concern. Nobody for whom the highlight of their day is a bottle of scotch, a packet of fags and a happy meal will adopt healthy lifestyles no matter how much we bully them to do so. We need to consider the future rather than be obsessed with the present. Such patients need to be given the hope of better lives – lives that will be missed – lives which might just motivate the healthy living that will enable such lives to be more fully enjoyed.
Rather than offering answers that won’t work, and adding to the futility that all too many experience, medicine must stop trying to be the solution to the problems for which it is not the answer. Being encouraged to constantly look inward at ourselves is the opposite to what is needed if we are to enjoy the fulfilled lives we hope we’ll live. More than a fourth antihypertensive or a third line statin, to be happy we need to be valued as members of local communities, undertake worthwhile work and enjoy meaningful connections with others. We need to know what it is to love and be loved. That is all of society’s responsibility, and though that too may be a vain hope, it is at least preferable than hoping solely in ourselves. I for sure though need one that’s even better still,
At work, to keep us going in hard times, we need also the hope that our practices will continue to be communities which provide such opportunities. They need to remain small enough to allow relationships between both staff and patients to develop over time in ways that just aren’t possible in large anonymous organisations. Staying reasonably small enables us to notice and appreciate others even as we are noticed and appreciated ourselves. Lose this and we will find we have gotten’ ourselves into another nice mess. And so, for as long as I am privileged to be able to continue to practice in the way I do now, in a supportive partnership looking after personal lists, I’m not looking to leave or reduce my commitments any time soon.
Because, I guess, ‘I’ll miss this when we’re gone’
Now if only I could dance.
‘Stan and Ollie’ is currently available to watch free to those with an Amazon Prime subscription.
For a related blog reflecting on the Covid-19 pandemic click here
For a more theological take on the film click here
It’s no fun to be lonely. It’s no fun to live by yourself and spend each evening trying to keep yourself busy in the hope that you can somehow forget how alone you really are. Sometimes though, you just can’t forget and it’s a job then to do anything at all. The weekends don’t help. Rather than being something to look forward to, they serve only to heighten the sense of isolation that you feel as the long hours drag by with you seeing nobody from the end of one working week to the beginning of another.
Hopes of ever meeting somebody and settling down seem like an unattainable dream. And so, as the loneliness continues, the unhappiness grows. The more unhappy you become, the greater the anxiety you feel at what it would take for the sadness to end until you find, in time, that the more you long for the loneliness to end, the more you long to be alone. You wonder what the point of it all might be and conclude that there is no point at all.
Alone in your room, imagining the happiness of others, it’s easy to sing silently along to The Velvet Underground,
‘All the people are dancing
And they’re having such fun
I wish it could happen to me
But if you close the door
I’d never have to see the day again’
Antidepressants may be offered to you but they never really help. No substitute for friends, they’re not the answer – too often they just make you feel worse. Conceivably, talking therapy could help a little but, rather than the simple steps towards a better tomorrow that it was suggested they would be, each session becomes just one more thing to survive, just one more hurdle to overcome. It’s hard to know what to do in such circumstances, not because you lack intelligence, on the contrary you have learnt well what the world has too readily taught, that isolation is good and that we all have to make it on our own.
And so, as I talk to such people, I sense them whispering, ‘I don’t know what to do’. And too often, like them, I find myself stuck, not knowing how to answer. When we eventually part, as I too abandon them to their solitude, their sadness surrounds me and increasingly it becomes my own.
‘All the lonely people – where do they all come from?’
Loneliness, and the accompanying anxiety that is so often both its’ cause and effect, is a common problem and, to those who experienced it, it is both crippling and overwhelming. And the problem is getting worse and will, I suspect, continue to do so for as long as society persists in fragmenting and we carry on being encouraged to live too much of our lives online. Because a life lived virtually is a life that isn’t quite complete – and a life that isn’t quite complete will feel, to many, like a life that is no longer worth holding on to.
So run the opening lines of Johnny Flynn’s theme song to the TV comedy series ‘Detectorists’. If you haven’t seen it then do yourself a favour and give it a go. It’s about two friends, Andy and Lance, who spend all their spare time metal detecting. To be honest, not a lot happens. But as what doesn’t happen unfolds, a wonderful friendship between two people is portrayed, one which one can’t help feeling is something that is precious beyond words. Something to be envied.
In one scene Lance is talking to another character about his years of metal detecting. He says,
‘This was our escape from the rude world, the madding crowd…Do you know how often we find gold? Never. We never find it. And that’s what we’re looking for. We don’t say that. We don’t say that we’re looking for gold. We pretend we’re happy finding buckles and buttons and crap, but what we’re hoping for is gold.’
But what Lance is forgetting is the gold he has already found in the friendship he shares with Andy. The truth is that, because of that friendship, he really can be happy ‘finding buckles and buttons and crap’. Likewise, we too all need to sometimes stop our searching for things that don’t really matter and see what of value lies right in front of us but which we so easily overlook. Good relationships are the basis for happiness – if we have them, we are fortunate indeed. We should not underestimate their worth.
Despite having no interest in angling, another program that I have enjoyed immensely is ‘Gone Fishing’. Like ‘Detectorists’, whilst precious little takes place, we see a genuine friendship in action, this time a real one, between Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer. They are long standing friends who have known what it is to support one another through the difficulties they have each known in their lives. And again, it’s genuinely heart warming to watch. Good relationships enable us to carry on when life seems to be falling apart around us – if we have them, we need to be careful that we nurture them well.
I have often thought that it is less important what we do in life than who we do it with.
Friendships can and do make all the difference but they need time to develop, time that is spent together, time that our frenetic lifestyles too often don’t afford.
Given that humans are meant to live in community, it is no surprise to learn that loneliness is bad for us. It is of no surprise to anybody that individuals who experience prolonged loneliness are liable to suffer low mood and anxious thoughts but it is not solely in terms of our emotional wellbeing that loneliness has adverse effects. Less appreciated is the fact that loneliness is also bad for our physical health with those experiencing it having higher rates of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease as well as poorer cancer outcomes. It has even been suggested that loneliness is as bad for us as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The truth is that loneliness is deadly.
And what’s true for our patients is also true for us – being a GP can be a lonely experience too. The early years of being a doctor generally consist of a series of jobs each lasting just a few months before it’s all change and new acquaintances need to be made. It’s hard to establish good working relationships with colleagues in such circumstances and, even when settled in a job, work can be just too busy to allow time for real friendships to develop. What is more, the constant demands of the job can too easily play havoc with our relationships outside of work.
To have friends, both inside and outside of work, is vital – it is simply too important to leave to chance. In work, therefore, we must find time to support each another. We need to genuinely care for one another as friends rather than simply existing alongside each other as colleagues. It is not without good reason that GP partnerships have often been likened to marriages. Healthy partnerships, whether formalised as such or not, are grounded in the commitment that is inherent in those partnerships. They grow as a result of individual members of the team spending time alongside those with whom they go through life and with whom they can honestly acknowledge their weaknesses and struggles. They will not develop where individuals stay chained all day to their desk, constantly battling their own problems, all the while oblivious to those being experienced by others. Keeping doors open when not consulting, regularly taking time for informal chat and not neglecting the all-important daily gathering around the coffee machine all serve to build the working friendships that go a long way towards protecting those within medical teams from falling by the wayside. Informal practice meetings over dinner, annual away days and regular social events, all characteristic of healthy partnerships, will go still further. I consider myself fortunate indeed to be in such a practice.
And maintaining our home life, protecting it from the ever present threat of our work encroaching there, must also be a priority if our relationships outside of medicine are to have any chance of thriving and becoming another source of much needed support.
But to finish, let’s consider again those whom we come into contact with who are lonely. Because there are a lot of them about. Loneliness in the UK is at epidemic levels with, according to the Office of National Statistics, 2.4 million adult British citizens knowing what it is to be lonely. So if there are so many lonely people, and if loneliness is so bad for our health, why don’t we give it the same attention that we give to such things as blood pressure, smoking and cholesterol levels? Part of the answer, perhaps, lies in the fact that, with no pill available that can take away the isolation, there is no money to be made from these individuals who live on the edge of society. And where there is no money to be made, there is no incentive for those who decide what our priorities should be to make loneliness one of things that is considered important enough to tackle.
But there is another reason.
And that is that lonely go unnoticed – unless we are forced to see, they are so easily overlooked.
‘Eleanor Rigby
Died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came’
And so the lonely remain, and the sadness continues. For me at least, far more than the physical consequences of isolation, it is this, the enduring sadness that inevitably accompanies loneliness, that concerns me most. The problem of loneliness is not, of course, ours alone to solve, it is all of society’s responsibility, but even though most of those affected will never dare to ask us for our help, we should, I think, be conscious of both the problem and it’s invasive and malignant consequences. And so we must always keep asking the question,
‘All the lonely people – where do they all belong?’
Because, somehow a place for them has to be found. But how? Personally, faced with someone who is desperately lonely, I admit to sometimes hearing again the words. ‘I don’t know what to do’. Only this time it is me who is whispering them quietly to myself.
It isn’t easy to find ourselves not knowing what to do, it is part of what makes it difficult for us to break bad news to our patients, it’s part of what makes it hard for us to tell them that there is nothing more that medicine can offer. But telling someone that we can’t do anything more for them as doctors doesn’t mean that we can’t do more for them as individuals – we don’t have to leave them alone just because we can’t solve their problem.
In ‘Out of Solitude’, Henri Nouwen wrote,
‘When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.’
‘All the lonely people, where do they all belong?’ The answer, surely, is with friends.
Though it may be the case that sometimes we can do no more than be a friend who cares, a friend who cares may be all that we are needed to be. Because, when we do what may seem to be nothing very much, that is when we may actually be doing a very great deal indeed. Sometimes we need to stop being the doctors who disappear when they cannot help and become instead the individuals who, when they don’t know what to do, know how much it can help to simply stick around.
For as long as it takes for the one who is lonely to become, perhaps, somebody’s ’very special one’, to become, perhaps, somebody’s treasure.
“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”
So said Friedrich Nietzche. But was he right?
Promises change things – they give us hope.
Many of us, particular in these days of pandemic, want things to be better than they currently are, we want someone to change our future because our present is not to our liking. We all need hope. Hope keeps us going in the face of problems which seem insurmountable. Without it we become resigned to never ending difficulty and, like Nietzsche, tend towards depression and passivity.
Theologian Jurgen Moltmann writes, “Present and future, experience and hope, stand in contradiction to each other”. He suggests that “hope is directed to what is not yet visible… and brands the visible realm of present experience…as a transient reality that is to be left behind”.
But some are uncomfortable with our constantly living in the hope of a better tomorrow. ‘Mindfulness’, the psychological process of bringing ones attention to experiences occurring in the present, is increasingly advocated as the answer to all our problems. But whilst mindfulness may have its place when we are overwhelmed by unnecessary anxiety concerning the future, grounding us, as it does, in the here and now and helping us appreciate what we have and can currently enjoy, if we imagine we can sort out our very real problems by considering the intricacies of a tree, then surely we are mistaken.
T.S.Eliot penned, “The knowledge derived from experience…imposes a pattern, and falsifies”. What we know from what we encounter is not enough to understand fully. We need to draw from outside of ourselves if we are not to be misled. The present requires the context given it by the past and is tempered by what is expected in the future. A powerful illustration of this is provided by John Piper. He asks us to imagine that, whilst walking through a hospital, we hear the screams of somebody in pain. He suggests that how we feel about what we hear will differ greatly depending on whether we are on an oncology ward or a labour ward. The future matters – it changes our present.
As a doctor, there is a sense in which I am in the business of changing the future for my patients – offering a promise of a better tomorrow for those with whom I consult. I seek to envisage what currently can’t be seen and then endeavour to bring it into reality for them. Moltmann again: “Hope’s statements of promise…stand in contradiction to the reality which can at present be experienced. They do not result from experiences, but are the condition for the possibility of new experiences. They do not seek to illuminate the reality which exists, but the reality that is coming.” So, for example, when I issue a prescription for an antibiotic, it is the proffering of a hope, that the infection will come to an end. It’s a promise that what is not true now, will shortly be so.
But really changing the future is an act solely of the divine – although doctors can help us with an irritating cough, we need more than such trivial matters resolved. In particular, we can strive all we like to live in the moment but, as temporal creatures, we cannot escape the future. Not least, we cannot deny that we are cognisant of our own mortality. Death is a problem we all have to face and one which medicine, despite its best efforts, will never solve.
To quote Moltmann once more, “The pain of despair surely lies in the fact that a hope is there – but no way opens up towards its fulfilment”. What then can we do when faced with the problem of death. Must we, if we are to carry on at all, agree with L.M. Montgomery that ‘life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes’? Should we, with Dylan Thomas, “rage, rage against the dying of the light” or comfort ourselves with mere mindfulness as we “go gentle into that good night”.
Death is not the only future problem we face that medicine cannot solve. Many people have lost hope of things ever being better – the future is something only to be feared. We live in an increasingly anxiety ridden society. Henry Thoreau wrote “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them.” But Thoreau was wrong – the desperation is deafening.
Many of us will know what it is to have a difficulty which appears beyond us, which wears us down and threatens both our present happiness and the happiness we desire for tomorrow. If then we are to solve the problem of the future, we must either limit its’ importance and be content to be satisfied by the joy we can muster in the present, or struggle to find the antidote to despair that is the hope of something better. There is much that medicine can do but ultimately our hope would be better placed elsewhere – after all, a misplaced hope is a false hope, and a false hope is no hope at all.
We need to be directed towards a real hope that can lift us above the suffering of the here and now, something we can look forward to and which, despite everything, will keep us going; something which, even if it can’t immediately get us to the top of the mountain we face, manages to draw us up a little higher and puts us in a place where we are able to at least imagine what the view from the top might look like.
When life is hard, whether at work or elsewhere, we all want things to be better – it’s then, more than ever, that we need a hope for the future to keep us keeping on. And for that we need someone who can make, and keep, bigger promises than a mere doctors assurance that a rash will clear up.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was a German born philosopher best known for ‘The Human Condition’ (1958) She identified two key behaviours for bringing about change – those of forgiveness and the making and keeping of promises. Forgiveness, she said, is the behaviour by which it is possible to nullify past actions, releasing others from what they have done and enabling them to change their minds and start again. ‘Forgiveness’, she writes, ‘is the key to action and freedom’ and ‘the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history’. In contrast, the ability to make and keep promises is the key to make the future different from the past. ‘Promises are the…way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable’.
I think Arendt was right, but though she would have felt that these behaviours were possible for humans, in truth our efforts are often insufficient. We need a God who truly forgives, completely, and who can make and keep promises big enough to change our future in ways in which we can not. Promises that can assure us that our biggest problems can be solved. And that is exactly the kind of God we do have.
God is a God who makes promises, promises he keeps. He’s been making them from the early chapters of Genesis. Amazing promises – that he kept. And he has made amazing promises to us too, namely that, in Christ we are forgiven and our future is with him. And he will keep those promises too. Believe that and we will not lose hope, no matter our current circumstances.
Promised forgiveness – changes our past.
Promises believed – change our present
Promises made – change our future .
Nietzsche was wrong. Because, in reality, hope does not prolong the torments of man, rather it sustains us through them.
Promises change things – they give us hope. And all the more so when, based on promises we can absolutely trust, our hope is absolutely certain.
In the middle of a global pandemic, when all we seem to hear is bad news, it’s helpful to be reminded of some good. When we’re constantly being told what we need to do, it’s helpful to be reminded of what has already been done.
One Father’s Day a few years ago I went, along with the family, to visit my Dad. I was driving along the North Devon Relief Road, happily minding my own business when, all of a sudden, I noticed a police car following along behind me.
‘So what?’ you might ask. Well, the thing is, not only was it following along behind me, it was also flashing it’s lights at me – you know the ones – the rather striking blue ones. ‘I’d better stop’, I thought to myself, ‘and see if the police officer wants any help with his enquiries.’ And do you know what? He did. In fact, so keen was he to have my assistance, that he invited me to step out of my car, and join him in his.
Now I should point out that at this point I had no idea what he wanted to talk to me about. I hadn’t been speeding and, as far as I was aware, the car I was driving was in good condition. I was at a total loss. Perhaps, I thought to myself, it was simply because he was rather proud of his car and he therefore wanted to show me just how much better it was compared to mine!
Once I was seated comfortably, the police officer began. He started by asking me some rather easy warm up questions, my name, where had I come from, and where was I heading, all of which I answered without any great difficulty.
And then he told me two things:
The first thing that he told me was the law and how I was guilty of breaking it. He told me I was guilty, guilty of driving too close to the car in front of me and, what’s more, that I had been doing so for the previous four miles. He told me that ‘only a fool, breaks the two second rule’ and, in so doing, though I hadn’t realised it at the time, I now appreciate that, by implication, he was saying that that was exactly what I was – a fool. He went on to tell me that my crime of ‘driving without due care and attention’ was worthy of a court appearance and six points on my licence.
Gulp.! Now the law is the law and, having broken it, I realised that I had no complaint, no argument. And so I acknowledged that it was the proverbial fair cop, there being no point in my trying to argue my way out of it anyway since he had it all on film. His rather fancy car really was better than mine, it even had an built in camera! The truth could not be denied, I was guilty.
I was, of course, sorry for what I’d done but being sorry didn’t change the fact that he had me, as they say, bang to rights. And so I found myself hoping that he’d show me leniency, that he’d spare me the punishment the law required, that he’d treat me, not as one who’d broken the law but instead as one who’d been driving safely. That is I hoped he’d be gracious to me, that he’d show me mercy and not treat me in the way the law demanded, in the way that I deserved.
But before I had the chance to beg…or cry…he went on.
And he told me the second thing.
He told me some news – some good news. He told me that he had decided to let me off! I don’t know why he chose not to punish me, it certainly wasn’t because of anything in me. It wasn’t because there were other drivers who were driving even more dangerously than me that day, it wasn’t a result of a promise on my part to never do it again, it wasn’t even because I’d expressed sufficient remorse. It was simply because, though I was guilty, he had chosen to be forgiving.
And that news was good news – it was gospel.
As a result of the policeman’s kindness I kept a clean driving licence that day. Not because I wasn’t guilty of any driving offences – but rather because I wasn’t counted as having done so. And no record was kept!
And that, it seems to me, is a good illustration of Law and Gospel.
Recorded in the Bible there are many laws, the most famous of which are contained in the Ten Commandments. They can be summarised by the command that we should love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind and our neighbour as ourselves.
However, like the Highway Code that I broke all those years ago, this is a command I have not kept. Over the years I have been repeatedly guilty of breaking God’s law and so, like that Sunday afternoon, because the law condemns me and declares me guilty before God, I am left conscious of my need for mercy.
But, as was the case from the lips of the police officer that day, God also has some good news for me to hear. The Christian gospel announces to me that I am acquitted. It tells me that I am forgiven – but not because of any good in me. It’s not because there may be people who have done worse things than I have, not because I’ve promised to do better in the future, not even because I’ve been sufficiently contrite. Rather I am forgiven simply because, despite my guilt, God has chosen to be gracious to me.
Because God is, by nature, gracious, that characteristic of his by which he decides to treat us better than we deserve. Rather than punishing us as the law demands, he chooses, by way of Jesus’ death on the cross, to pay our debt on our behalf and welcome us into his family as his adopted sons. He chooses to treat us as if we’d never done anything wrong, as obedient children who had always behaved the way we should.
The law tells us what we need to do to be acceptable to God. And it crushes us.
The gospel tells us what God has done to make us acceptable to God. And fills us with joy.
Now don’t misunderstand. The law is good, everything about it is right. The rule that says that we should not drive too close to the car in front is an excellent rule, one that I fully agree with. But as my actions proved, just as the rule itself didn’t stop me from breaking it, so too the very good command to ‘Love God’ does not cause me to do so.
But here’s the funny thing. Since that encounter with the policeman, I sometimes think of his kindness when I’m driving and, though my driving is still not perfect, it has, as a consequence, improved a little. I find myself wanting to drive better. The law didn’t change my behaviour, but the policeman’s kindness did.
And so it is with the gospel. God’s law does not have the power to change us, but the kindness of God revealed to us in the gospel can. Because that gospel is very good news indeed. You see, not only is Jesus counted as if he was guilty of all the wrong things we have done, but we are counted as if we had lived the perfect life that Jesus led. It’s a wonderful exchange by which Jesus dies for our sin and we become God’s adopted children. That’s what the Bible means when it tells us that, ‘For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ [Corinthians 5:21]. And the thankfulness we feel as a result of all that has been achieved by his kindness draws from us a love for God that the simple command to love Him could never do. We find ourselves wanting to be better.
Whether written, as is widely believed, by John Bunyan or, as is perhaps more likely by the English hymn writer John Berridge, the words of this short rhyme make the distinction between law and gospel clear.
‘Run and work the law commands
But gives us neither feet nor hands
Far better news the gospel brings
It bids us fly and gives us wings’
Inevitably, over the coming weeks there will be more bad news, and for some it may be particularly heavy to bear. Even so, we must not forget the good news, we must not be ashamed of the gospel ‘for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes’ [Romans 1:16].
Whilst the coronavirus continues to affect us, there will be much that we will be told we need to continue to do both to protect ourself and others as well as to support those who continue to care for us. Even so, we must not forget what God has already done for us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Because, ‘when the cares of our hearts are many’, it is knowing that God is far, far kinder than even the most benevolent of police officers, ‘that will cheer our souls’. It is knowing that ‘in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting [our] trespasses against [us]’ [2 Corinthians 5:19] that will allow us to ‘rejoice in our sufferings’. And it is knowing the good news of the gospel that will sustain us through the bad news of the coronavirus.
Let me ask you a question, ‘Have you a giant in your life that needs to be overcome?’
Many would say that the current global pandemic is a giant sized problem, without doubt it is one that is likely to continue, in one way or another, to effect all our lives for a good while yet. But even giant sized problems can be overcome.
The question posed above is one that is sometimes asked by motivational speakers encouraging those facing difficulty to look to the story of David and Goliath for the inspiration necessary to overcome their problems. Undoubtedly there are wonderful things to be learnt from this well known biblical passage, but the mistake that is often made is to imagine that in order to get anywhere in life we all just need to be a bit more like David. And the reason this is a mistake is that, if we are to identify with anyone in the story, it shouldn’t be with David but rather with the terrified Israelites who are quivering in their boots at the prospect of going out to battle the Philistines.
Because David, when he goes out, as Israel’s representative in battle, to fight the Philistine champion Goliath, is not a picture of who we should be but rather a picture of someone who would come after him and who would himself act as the representative of the children of God, somebody who would one day go out to battle their enemy on their behalf. Because David, the shepherd boy who became King is a picture of Jesus, the King of Kings who was, and is, the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep.
The coronavirus, of course, is not really the biggest problem we face, it is but a manifestation of our biggest problem. Because, although the vast majority of us will not succumb to Covid-19, we will, despite the media’s apparent belief that death is an anomaly, all one day die. Rather than the coronavirus, it is death itself that is our biggest problem.
Death is the last enemy, it is the giant in our life that needs to be defeated. But defeated it has been, not by us, but by Jesus.
Regardless of how it might come about, the reason we all die is because we are all by nature sinful. Just as the chickenpox rash is the evidence of that particular virus being present within us, so too our individual acts of wrongdoing are the evidence of our desperately sick hearts. For sure some of us are more spotty than others but it remains the case that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God [Romans 3:23]. And the wages of sin is death [Romans 6:23].
If death is to be defeated, if it’s power over us is to be taken away, then something has to be done regarding our sin. That is not something we can do ourselves and that is why we should, like those scared Israelites before Goliath, find ourselves quivering with fear before death. Unless of course we have one who can fight the battle for us, a Saviour who can secure the victory we could not. Wonderfully, in Jesus, that is exactly what we do have.
Since the sting of death is sin, if sin is dealt with then death loses its power. But until then, as those who sin, we are, as a consequence, doomed to die. Indeed, so inevitable is our death we could be considered to effectively be dead already.
But here’s the good news! We who were ‘dead in [our] trespasses…God made alive together with [Christ], having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him’ [Colossians 2:13-15]
When Jesus was crucified, he took the punishment for everything that we have done wrong. And with sin dealt with we can ask, as others have before us, ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” [1 Corinthians 15:55].
Whilst the NHS is undoubtedly a means of God’s grace for which we are right to be grateful, it’s apparent deification and the nation’s weekly act of worship on a Thursday evening is somewhat disconcerting, and not a little concerning, not only for me but also a number of my colleagues in the medical profession. There is, of course, a place for a little quiet appreciation, but it seems to me that things have gone some way beyond that. Such ongoing acclaim adds a burden of expectation on the NHS that it simply can not meet. Because the reality is that the NHS has never saved a life, nor will it ever. At best, it has only ever prolonged some. And whilst the search for a vaccine for Covid-19 is a worthy endeavour, it’s development will not greatly perturb death who will continue to find novel ways of ending our lives. Furthermore I am not a #NHSHero, nor am I one who is fighting on the ‘front line’. All is quiet at the front since death is already in retreat, defeated by somebody far braver than I and who has already fought, alone, the decisive battle on our behalf.
So, the coronovirus, is it a giant sized problem? Without doubt it’s large in all our minds but the struggle that we are currently engaged in is in reality no more than a minor skirmish in a war that has already been won. Let’s not forget that God isn’t called the Almighty for nothing and, regardless of how well we might prepare for battle, ‘the victory belongs to the LORD.’ [Proverbs 21:31]
And neither let us be in any doubt, ‘Death [really has been] swallowed up in victory’ [1 Corinthians 15:54]. For whilst ‘the wages of sin is death…the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. [Romans 6:23]. Jesus said ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live’ [John 11:25].
Back in the days when it was still dark whilst I made my morning commute and Covid-19 was still something I’d never heard of, I found myself reflecting on three matters that I had noticed on my way to work.
The first was this – misinterpreted Sat Navs cause confusion.
One morning I was perplexed when midway to work my Sat Nav, for no apparent reason, added 18 minutes to my expected journey time to work. Initially I assumed that, in the darkness, I’d missed the motorway exit at Junction 23 and my extended travelling time was due to the fact that I’d now have to drive up to Junction 22 before heading back. But then I reached the Bridgwater exit that I thought I’d missed and thus came to the conclusion, in the absence of any other conceivable explanation, that I must have entered some kind of time warp and my whole understanding of the space-time continuum would needing rethinking. The truth though was more prosaic – it was simply that I had mistakenly set the Sat Nav for home rather than work. My confusion had resulted from misinterpreting what the Sat Nav was saying.
It strikes me that we can become similarly confused in our Christian walk if we set inappropriate expectations of how our lives will work out as a result of misinterpreting what the Bible tells us. If we expect a carefree life, devoid of difficulty, hardship and suffering, we are likely to be confused and unsettled when these unwelcome intruders turn up in our lives. And if we have believed that Christians are immune to such problems, if we have believed that Christians can expect to avoid suffering, we may run the risk of coming to incorrect assumptions when we find ourselves experiencing such difficulties. We may find ourselves falsely imagining that our difficulties are a result of our having put our trust in a God who does not love us enough, or is not powerful enough, to prevent us suffering. We may conclude we have brought the suffering upon ourselves by some personal shortcoming for which God is punishing us. Tragically, we may even come to the conclusion that God does not exist at all.
If we live life with false assumptions we will be in danger of coming to false conclusions. It is so important therefore that we have a right understanding of how we can expect our lives to play out – we need to have our spiritual sat navs set accurately. We must not be surprised when suffering comes because Jesus himself makes it plain that ‘in this world [we] will have tribulation’ [John 16:33]. Nonetheless we can take heart because, even in the throws of a pandemic, we know that Jesus has ‘overcome the world’.
Second observation – Mobile phones are presumptuous.
I had recently acquired a new phone and, after I had had it for a couple of weeks, I was surprised as I climbed into my car one morning when it informed me that my journey to Bridgwater would take 29 minutes. At first I found it a little unnerving to think it knew where I was going since I had not told it, and the information it offered had not been solicited. I soon realised it had simply learnt, by virtue of being in my trouser pocket for the previous couple of weeks, what my normal movements were. Though a remarkable piece of electronics, my phone was, however, being presumptuous. I say presumptuous because travelling around in my pocket for a few weeks did not give it the right to think it knew me. OK it got lucky that particular morning – and a number of mornings since if I’m honest – but, believe it or not, it takes more than a few weeks to get to know who I am.
I have known myself now for a little over 53 years and I’m still not sure I know myself terribly well. I continue to surprise and, not infrequently, disappoint myself – with who I am and what I think, do and say. Self help gurus may assure us that we’re ‘good enough’ but I don’t think they’re right. I, for sure, am not good enough – as a doctor, husband, father, or friend. It’d be terrific if I was so much better in each of these roles and be able to fix those seemingly unsolvable difficulties which continue to present themselves. But the truth is I’m not a good enough person because like everybody else I am a sinner.
The twin truths of:
‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick’ [Jeremiah 17:9]
and
‘…man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord look on the heart’ [1 Samuel 16:7]
do not make comfortable reading. Which is why, I continue to draw great consolation from the belief that I am known fully by one who is big enough to cope with those difficulties with which I can’t – not least my own sinfulness. One of the great things about being a Christian is that we are known – completely known – not by a jumped up piece of electronics but by a Heavenly Father who loves us even though we are sinful – not because we are lovely but because he is loving. He knows us intimately – better than we know ourselves.
‘O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold O Lord, you know it altogether.’ [Psalm 139:1-4]
And even though our problems remain – inexplicable and troubling to ourselves and others – our hope remains outside ourselves – in one we believe knows, not only what we will do in the next 29 minutes or the next 29 years, but what we will do throughout the next 29 millennia – and beyond. More than that we also know that, even as we experience our most difficult days all that happens to us is designed by our loving Heavenly Father for our good – all of it ultimately with a view to conforming us to the likeness of Jesus.
Because our hope is not that God thinks we’re OK but rather that he loves us enough to complete the good work that he has begun of making us OK [Philippians 1:6]. It is not that we have loved God but rather that ‘he has loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ [1 John 4:10]. What a joy it is to be drawn by a loving Heavenly Father who really does love us rather than being driven by our need to love ourselves. What a joy it is be held safely in God’s everlasting arms on account of his mercy and grace, on account of his worth, rather than forever striving to prove our own.
And the third thing I noticed on my way to work? Well simply this.
The sunrise is sometimes staggeringly beautiful. There were a few glorious ones when I was thinking about these things. It is good sometimes to get a little perspective by looking outward at something more impressive than oneself. Not only is it more satisfying to admire the admirable than it is to be admired, it’s good to be reminded that, after a period of darkness, the sun eventually rises.
Scripture assures us that ‘Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning’. [Psalm 30:5] What makes the difference is the arrival of the light. Light is a positive that can be switched on in a way that darkness can not. Turning on a lamp in a dark room dispels the darkness but darkness can never be switched on so that that it dispels the light. Light reveals the truth that darkness seeks to conceal.
In dark days we need the light, we need the truth, we need Jesus. We need Jesus of whom the apostle John once wrote, ‘In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it…The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.’ [John 1:4-5,9]
And that really is something worth reflecting on.
For some alternative medical reflections made in the darkness, click here
Life is frequently difficult, and living through a Coronavirus pandemic, a war in Eastern Europe and an economic downturn does not make things any easier. Consequently, every now and then a day comes along which is just too much – when the demands put upon us exceed that with which we are able to cope. There is just too much need and we simply can’t meet it. We can feel drained of every ounce of energy that we possess as a result of our work, the needs of our local community or even our home life where the problems we face and the struggles of those we love sometimes add to our burden regardless of how willingly that burden is borne.
We can be so overwhelmed that it can feel that our inability to deliver the impossible reflects negatively on us, that our failure to solve every problem suggests some moral failure on our part. But there is no shame in being asked for more than we have and only being able to give all that we’ve got. We are after all only human. Our mistake is to imagine that we could ever meet every need. To imagine that we could ever do that would, in truth, be the height of presumption.
Late one November, a year or two ago the good people of Amazon were kind enough to email me, informing me that here at last, on Black Friday, were the deals I had been waiting for. 40% off exclusive Le Creuset Cast Iron Round Casseroles, 45% off a Braun Cordless Epilator and 33% of a giant bar of Toblerone. Admittedly that last one did have some appeal, but Amazon didn’t offer me the thing that I’d really like. Rest. On the contrary, by trying to convince me that these are deals that I really didn’t want to miss out on, they succeeded only in adding to my stress by encouraging me to strive still further to avoid missing out.
It’d be good, wouldn’t it, really good, to get some rest?
The notion of rest is a highly significant one in the Bible. It speaks not so much of an absence of work but rather an end to struggle. It speaks of a state of affairs when all is as it should be. The language of Genesis Chapter 1 has God resting on the seventh day. Interestingly, to me a least, is the idea that God rests not from work but rather from the work of creation. God continues to work, [John 5:17], indeed he neither slumbers or sleeps, [Psalm 121:4] sustaining the creation that he has bought about. But, on the seventh day, he rested from creation because creation was complete – because everything was good, everything was very good.
The Bible also talks of a future rest – when things will once again be just as they should be. The creation account of Genesis 1 is followed by the fall in Genesis 3. Right now we exist in fallen world when all is not what it should be. Because of man’s rebellion against God, our lives are difficult, our work is a struggle.
‘Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust and to dust you will return’ [Genesis 3:17-19].
This is bad news but, equally, the gospel assures us that ‘the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us’ and ‘that the creation will be set free from its bondage to corruption’. [Romans 8:18,21]
This corruption is particularly evident to us today – but it will end.
So where does rest come from. Jesus said:
‘Come to me all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light’ [Matthew 11:28-30].
We can not make everything right, we can’t make even ourselves right – but we can go to one who can. Accepting that we are not as we should be, giving up the pretence that we are good, is always the first step towards making things better.
Part of the solution then is to realise that we are not the answer. And neither are our man made philosophies. Rather we need to rest in the glorious truth that God does not love us because we are good, but rather that he loves us to make us good, relieves us of the heavy burden of constantly trying to prove our worth and replaces it with the easy yoke of his acceptance of us in Christ.
So when is this rest available. Now or in the future? The answer is both – that is both now and in the future. We are called to rest in Christ now. We are to trust in his completed work on our behalf, a work that took him to Calvary where he was ‘pierced for our transgressions, and crushed for our iniquities’ [Isaiah 53:5]. And, because of his resurrection three days later we can be assured that his work secures the future eternal rest that we all so long for.
Faith is not our believing that God will bring about what we would like to be true – rather it is believing that what God says is true, He will bring about. It ‘is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’ [Hebrews 11:1] that comes from believing that God will keep his promises. Because we can be absolutely certain of this means that we can know a contentment today in our discontent, a rest in our restlessness. By faith we receive now what will one day be truly ours.
So today we are invited to come before God with nothing but our need and receive from him. ‘Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price.’ [Isaiah 55:1] Now that is a Black Friday offer that I don’t want to miss out on.
But this does not mean that we are not active, indeed we are called to work to make the world a better place, but that work results from us having first rested in someone greater than ourselves, someone from whom we draw our strength and who works through us for the good of others.
This notion of resting before we work is reflected in how the Bible speaks of how a day is structured. We tend to think that night follows day whereas in fact the Bible speaks of day following night. The language of Genesis 1 repeats the refrain ‘And there was evening and there was morning, the first day…And there was evening and there was morning the second day’. The Jewish sabbath began at sunset. Night comes before day – we rest before we work.
So we rest now in Christ and yet at the same time we struggle on. Right now there is a tension in our rest, a rest that is already present yet at the same time not yet consummated. There are more struggles ahead for us all. But there will come a time when that eternal rest is realised – when our struggles are over, and when our joy is complete. The seventh day in Genesis never ends – and nor will that future rest. Then ‘the dwelling place of God [will be] with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’ [Revelation 21:3-4]
And that will be more satisfying that even an oversized bar of Swiss chocolate.
Some musings 