Addressing a HARD rock

Until today, I’ve always assumed that the story of Moses “talking” to a rock was just a story. It’s always puzzled me, actually – until today. And suddenly, today, I wonder if it could be a metaphor as to how we might pray about HARD issues.

Moses was in a hard, implacable situation. There was no water and people needed drink. At desperation point God told Moses to “speak to the rock.” Moses obeyed, and out gushed water. A miracle.

Yesterday I texted a friend, seeking support over a hard situation. Someone whom I care about very much feels rejected in life (by life?) and, no matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to ‘soften’ things with the balm of love.

(A note on the side. When I texted the word ‘rejected’, I noted that predictive text wrote ‘selected’. I had to press the button to change it to ‘rejected’. How intriguing. But I digress.)

“Jane!” my friend texted back. “I think this must be an occasion when you must speak to the rock!”

Me:  “????!”

Friend:  “You can’t change the sense of rejection. It stands, immoveable, like the rock. BUT I think this is an occasion to do as Moses did. He had to SPEAK to the rock. Then water came from it.”

Our text exchange ended but I had food for thought. Am I (are we) called to “Speak to the rock”? It feels such a huge step, I would need more faith than I have. But then, faith IS a gift, and Jesus told us that His Father likes to give it to us; we only need to ask...

And then? Am I to address this spirit of rejection? Do I tell the person that something good – something much needed – will gush forth? … that the desperate craving for love, the ‘water’ of life, will become satisfied?

It would be worth a try. Anything is worth a try. But it ain’t half challenging to consider speaking to a rock…

Security compared with apprehension

I’ve been given more details about new baby Rose (mentioned in my previous blog), who was born in the quietness of the very early hours yesterday. It was the dark hours of the night while the world slept. When the world woke up, people were drawn to see the wonder of new birth. 

It is the grandmother who has told me these little snippets, and she has also told me just a little about her own experiences when she gave birth. The midwife in me can picture it very vividly. The birth of tiny Rose was a very different story from the birth of her grandmother’s first baby.

That baby, decades ago, was the firstborn of a young woman experiencing an emotional storm. The mother, giving birth for the first time, was a doctor who felt that she therefore ought to know what to do, even though this was her firstborn. That baby’s mother wanted (or needed) to keep her parents at a distance: she felt too threatened to allow anyone to come close. How could she begin this journey, even though it was a voyage of love?

That was a baby born into something that sounds quite different from little baby Rose – the one who will be “always beautiful,” as I described yesterday. Baby Rose was born into tranquil water. She was received into an atmosphere where there is a place for a thought-ful new individual… Yes, that was one of grandmother’s words for the miracle who lay in her lap yesterday afternoon. “She was thought-ful,” she said to me later. “And do you know, Jane?” she told me more than asked me. I could hear the tears in her voice. “When her father spoke, that newborn baby even turned her head: she turned towards him, seeking more of what she knew to be familiar. She recognised him. She was looking for him, her eyes wide open…”

Those of us who have never given birth have missed a miracle like no other.

"That rose is beautiful!"

Remember when you last saw a rose?
And you may have thought, with awe, “Isn’t that beautiful!”
The beauty seems to be new with each bud. Have you ever looked at one- this is a a truly beautiful rose - and thought, “Beautiful rose. Oh yes; I’ve seen one of those before...”
A friend gave birth this morning and named the baby, “Rose”. The friend, a musician, had heard Bach’s music described as “always beautiful.” She would always be awed by the beauty, again and again; no matter how many times she heard it. Just like a rose... and hence the name for her baby.
I am moved to tears. Why? Because (and my friend doesn’t know this) she has spoken to me about the main character in my new, soon-to-be-published-book. I named 'my' character “Rose”. As a little girl she had felt she was beautiful …until a man stole her sense of being truly loveable. Once things had gone wrong, she concluded that she would have to stop trusting what her Granny said of her, that “Rose is such a lovely girl.” Alone in her pink room, she told herself that she could no longer believe that word “is.” Instead she would have to make it “was”. She repeated to herself: “Rose was such a lovely girl.” That's in the very first chapter, when her quest only begins.
But a rose is always beautiful. Each one.
And so, this evening, as I ponder the name of this baby named Rose, and I consider Rose in my book, I seek to absorb into my own soul the fact that God also describes me as beautiful. However ugly I may feel, however much I consider myself dismissively as “just another human,” God yearns for me to see myself as He sees me. Uniquely beautiful.
Me.
And you of course...

The loneliness of sleepless nights

Sleepless nights – they’re coming back and I’m frightened. I hate them. My mind churns round and round with unresolved stuff. Last year for several months I woke earlier and earlier until I got no more sleep from about 2.00am. Now, once again, I’ve become increasingly restless: last night I woke at 1.51 (digital clocks!). And the problem? I feel so alone; so dreadfully alone.
What can I do?
Today I picked up Henri Nouwen’s book, ‘Beloved’. He says that there is a fact – we are alone. We can respond either by feeling lonely or by embracing the solitude.
Jesus embraced solitude. And He was equipped to do so because His Father had told Him – and He had heard – that He was the beloved.
I know the theory, and could quote with my lips how Scripture tells us (me) over and over again that we are beloved by God. But how can I feel it in my heart? HOW? There is no switch to switch so that I feel as loved as God says I am.
This morning I’ve looked more carefully at Jesus. I’ve been intrigued that He wasn’t told only once that He was loved by His Father. We know about His baptism at the start of His ministry. But it happened twice more: I wonder why? Could it be that Jesus needed to hear again the voice from the cloud? At the transfiguration (He’d been talking about painful stuff), and yet again when His heart was ‘deeply troubled…’ (to use Jesus’ own words – oh, I can relate to John 12:27!).
Do I hanker after a voice from heaven telling me that I am His beloved? Do I imagine that that would make it easier to hear Him?
Nouwen suggests that we spend too much time trying to do things to persuade ourselves that we are loveable. He reckons that we thereby miss the solitude.
By contrast Jesus, by resisting His temptation, resisted making Himself look clever (turning stones into bread), or dramatic (having angels catch Him if He jumped off a tower), or as if He possessed all the land. Instead, He stayed quietly knowing Who He was: the beloved.
Now here’s the rub for me.
Given that I haven’t (yet) heard God’s voice in my sleepless nights, could I instead ponder how Jesus used to get up at night to pray; to commune with the One Who calls Him His beloved? We’re not told that He felt lonely. I guess that He went deliberately, to embrace the solitude. Hence He could say “I am in the Father and He is in Me.” He knew – because of His silent times between Father and Son.
SO... could I follow Him – if I can’t actually do it myself, then follow Him in my mind by reflecting on His example?
Well I won’t make it sound easy. After all, Jesus had to climb a mountain for His night-prayers. I reckon I know that feeling…

Being falsely accused (2)

I’d always thought that, if I got life right, I wouldn’t be mocked. I’d always imagined that, if others were laughing at me, I must have set myself up for it. Asked for it.
Always I’ve believd that, if only I didn’t make such big mistakes, I wouldn’t be accused of stuff that wasn’t true. Not to my face or (more scary) behind my back.
Until yesterday.
Yesterday, Good Friday, the penny dropped. For the first time in my life, I realised that none of the above is true. Because Jesus, Who was perfect, got mocked, derided, laughed at, even spat upon – all for stuff He hadn’t done.
So: being mocked is not a reflection on me. It’s a reflection on those who do the mocking.
That is very comforting.

Being falsely accused (Good Friday)

Everything was up in the air and thoughts swirling threateningly already – thoughts about the way in which some people are trumping up lies and twists and ugh, HORRIBLE compromises to integrity… But I suddenly found a grain of hope (it’s ironic, this) when, at the Good Friday procession, I heard that Jesus had had to endure all of this sort of thing. Indeed, never have I heard what happened to Jesus so clearly as I heard it today, all because of how torn my own heart is as I listen to the story of His trial. He had to stand there, knowing He was innocent, and watch His accusers try to find people to trump up lies in order to bear false witness against Him. How positively awful. I say that with conviction because I’m experiencing for myself how I feel with others fabricating stories in order to shore up ghastly accusations. It’s a terrible feeling. It leaves me with a bitter, bitter taste; and how on earth are we supposed to love people who behave in such an underhand way? It all feels impossible… yet here, in the Gospel, we are told that Jesus did love them. “Forgive them,” He said, “because they don’t know what they’re doing.”
I heard earlier today somebody describe forgiveness as ‘understanding’. “I prefer to use the word ‘understand’,” she said, “because forgiveness seems too big.” Yes, I would echo that wholeheartedly.
So if I am to love people who are lying against me, can I find some understanding of them? I sighed at the computer at the very idea. It’s all so daunting. I suppose (suppose) that people who are bent on bringing false accusations against a fellow human must feel desperately insecure. They must feel horrible inside themselves, so what we see and describe as ‘lies’ and ‘twists to the facts’ – they are signs of a pressing need to be right. Their own needs have rushed to the fore until they cause a blindness; they can no longer see what they are doing, nor imagine that they are damaging the life of another. If I try really hard, I can glimpse, just glimpse, a cause for compassion.
Did Jesus struggle to find His compassion? We are not told. I find Scripture as fascinating for what it doesn’t say as for what it does. We know that He was silent in the face of His accusers. Why? Could His silence have been despair? Had he lost hope, I wonder, and was He resigned to the inevitable consequence? He had been caught in a pincer grip, and the Jews were so hell-bent on having Him killed – did He sense that there was no point in fighting? Or was He spurred on by something more positive; what we refer to as our “calling”? Did He know that He had come to die, and this was the moment, and therefore could His outer silence have been because of His inner work of prayer: communing with His Father?
If so, what appalling, utter bitterness when even His Father withdrew. In His time of greatest need, the One to Whom He was closest – His greatest hope, His beginning and His destination; His Alpha and His Omega – HE withdrew. I can scarce take it in.
I can only imagine the incomparable dismay of abandonment in His voice when He cried, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”
I’m no theologian; this may be heresy. I merely share how it hits me. I sit weeping before my computer at the thought… it is all too real, since I came to this day with the knowledge that I’m being accused falsely, and I feel like an endless battle. Endless loss.
And yet Jesus could conclude: “It is finished.”
Amazing.
As the person closest to Jesus declared: “Surely He was the Son of God.”

Security - founded on WHAT?

Security does not mean “no problem”… and it’s taken me over fifty years to see that.

As a child I absolutely loved a particular song: one that spoke of security for me and naïve glee for others who chose a path that led, inevitably, to insecurity. I took great delight in exaggerating the actions. When “the rain came down” and our teacher invited us three- and four-year-olds to “reach your hands up to the sky!” I took her literally. I would stand on my chair twinkling my little fingers higher than anyone else’s. When “the floods came up” and everyone reached towards the floor, I pushed my hands flat on the carpet. I derived utter glee singing that the foolish man’s house “fell flat” (resounding CLAP). No wonder (I reasoned) if he had built his house on sand! He got what he deserved.

Unlike him, I was building my house on the rock; my house would stay firm. Or so I thought.

Moreover, when we sang that “the house on the rock stood firm,” I pictured the sun always shining on his house on the rock; I imagined it standing high above the flood waters. Never once did I think that the wise man had a moment’s insecurity.

Only now do I see that I missed the vital point of Jesus’ parable. The wise man endured terrible storms. The rain lashed down, and the floods came up for him, too. The wind whooshed and the man could not have been anything BUT dismayed.

I notice all this now – now that I see that I had inserted my own wishful thinking there. Jesus gave no such promise. He was the realistic One Who told us that the wind blew wildly and the floods came up for both builders.

We do not feel secure because nothing bad is happening. Security comes from knowing that the rock on which we’re standing will remain firm. The key is in finding the rock.

So where, exactly, is this rock on which I can stand? Today’s problem – the place where the rain is drenching me and I feel miserable – is in coping with dismay over some people who do not want the truth to be told in a situation. Where’s the rock for that? I’ve sweated all night, wondering…

This morning I found it. I suddenly realised that Jesus knew that people couldn’t bear the truth. He accepted it; anticipated it, even. That’s why He spoke in parables. That’s why He was silent in the presence of people who couldn’t hear the truth.

T S Eliot said, “Truth is not the same as fact.” Indeed.