Guess how much I love you

One of the first books that Sarah was given was a little storybook called Guess How Much I Love You. The book tells the story of Big and Little Nutbrown Hare. Little Nutbrown Hare wants to communicate to his father how much he loves him: he loves him as high as he can reach, hop, jump; he loves him right the way along the lane and over the hill; he loves him all the way to the moon. Each time Little Nutbrown Hare tries to tell his dad how much he loves him, his father responds with an even bigger statement of love: if Little Nutbrown Hare loves his father as high as he can jump, then the father loves the son as high as he can jump; if Little Nutbrown Hare loves his father to the moon, then the father loves him to the moon...and back.

It is a tale of competitive out-loving. A children’s story that touches on the profound impossibility of truly articulating how much we love one another. Love is the stuff of similes and metaphors. We cannot grasp adequately at the right words to describe it. We dance around the deep truths of what it is to really love another because that love is beyond us; it is bigger than us; it cannot be tamed by language. Language is tricky. It slips and slides away from us. We struggle to trust it, struggle to believe in its sincerity. Sometimes even the most heartfelt words tumble and fall to the floor (to coin a phrase from Emma Healey’s remarkable novel, Elizabeth is Missing) because we cannot grasp hold of them. Perhaps this is why Paul uses so many words to try and describe what love is like in 1 Corinthians 13. He uses so many words in the hope that just one might stick, that in our wrestling to understand something of the height, width, depth and length of the unfathomable love of God (Ephesians 3:18) we might manage to cling on to the smallest part of it, because even the smallest part of it would encompass all of us; it would overwhelm and surround us, enfolding us in the boundlessness of the love of our Creator.

When Sarah was born, the intensity of what I felt towards her took me back. It was something entirely new: a fierce, jealous, protective love that gushed out in hot tears. As I held her tiny body, and whispered hello to this new little life over and over again, I was racked with love for her. As the days and weeks pass, I cannot help but look at her and love her. I cannot help simply looking and beholding her smile, listening to her clucks and gurgles, watching her little tightly clenched fingers wrap themselves around mine.

One morning as I read her the story of Little and Nutbrown Hare, I felt that God posed the same challenge to me that the little hare poses to his father: guess how much I love you. Dare I believe that the King of the Universe feel towards me what I feel towards my daughter? That fierce, hot love that bubbles up and over into tears of joy? That ache in my chest that is almost painful? That innate protective instinct that would do anything to keep her harm? Dare I believe that the love of God for me is such that he would give his only son to have me back? He would give the most precious thing in his possession that I might be restored to relationship with him and allowed to call him Father, Abba, daddy?

I could never give Sarah up. The thought of giving her up for for someone else is entirely unthinkable. I cannot allow such a thought to form in my head because it is so ludicrous. And yet God’s love for us is such that this is exactly what he did. For the Father so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. (John 3:16) Let those overly familiar words sink in. Wash away the jadedness of a verse that we quote too often and too unthinkingly. That is how much our heavenly Father loves us - that he would allow us to murder his Son for our salvation. And that is how much the Son loves us: that he would agree to such a plan, that he would willingly walk the way of the cross, that he would be held to the cross not by nails but by love. No one took Jesus’ life from him. He laid it down. (John 10:18) He was not forced to the cross by an angry and abusive Father. He chose it. We are not left to guess what God’s love for us looks like. It looks like Good Friday. (1 John 4:9-10) It looks like a Son who knows that the only way for his lost brothers and sisters to come home is for him to be abandoned by his Dad. A Son who embraces our estrangement from the Father, who is forsaken that we might not be.

I do not claim to understand any of this. I am scratching the surface of something that is too deep and too wide. My words are tumbling to the floor even as I type them. They are too fickle and too insubstantial to hold Him. And yet they are all that I have to communicate something that is too precious to be contained within the bounds of language. And so that is my prayer on this dark Saturday before the glory of Sunday’s sunrise: that we might know the love that passes knowledge, that we might be filled to the measure of all the fullness of our God (Ephesians 3:19), that we might dare to trust in the love of a Father who gave up everything to win us back.

God can get tiny if we’re not careful

I have been wanted to write this blog for a long time. The title is another quote from Boyle's memoir. When recounting tales of life in amongst Los Angeles' Projects he reminds us that God can, all too quickly, become tiny; made in our own small image instead of being allowed to be Himself. 

I think I have been guilty of this in recent weeks. I have made God tiny.

In part, this is due to the massive upheaval of all things since Sarah's arrival. She is beautiful, joyful and I am totally besotted, but she is also exhausting.The first two weeks of her life lulled me into a false sense of security as she mainly slept through them, but now that she is the world's most wide awake newborn, I am struggling to make sense of what motherhood is supposed to look like. Especially motherhood with Jesus. All of the normal ways in which I connect with God - writing, reading scripture, silence, guitar playing, blogging - have been stripped away (mostly by the fact that breastfeeding teaches you the art of onehandedness and most of the above cannot really be done well with only one hand) and I find that my relationship with God feels dry and empty. I ache to spend time with Him in the ways that I am accustomed, trying desperately to squeeze in some space in the fleeting moments of each day (like this one) in which I might determine what I do with my time, but, those elusive moments are usually interrupted, or else never quite recognised as possibilities because I decide that I need to do the washing up instead.   

And then I start to feel resentful. Cross at Sarah because she won't nap and I am tired of ceaseless rocking. Cross with myself for not being able to multi-task. Cross with God because He feels distant. Cross at the fact that I have no idea how to share the love of Jesus with others when my energy is completely spent. I have perfected the art of making God tiny: squeezing him into the cracks and crevices of my day and then wondering why it is that He doesn't seem to fit.

A few days ago, I listened to a sermon by Danielle Strickland in which she talks about much the same thing as Boyle: the miniaturising of God. In putting so much emphasis on our own personal relationship with Jesus, she says that we run the risk of forgetting just how big and wonderful and wild his redemptive purposes are for all of creation. We make much of accepting Jesus into our hearts instead of recognising that, by saying Yes to Him, we are drawn into his heart. We are united with Him (Colossians 3:1) and invited to work alongside Him in changing the world. This is not to make little of the wonder and glory of a personal relationship with the King of the World - that in itself is pretty spectacular - but simply to say that although salvation might start with us it is not intended to remain so: we are saved that we might share the joy of salvation; we are welcomed in that others might also come in to join the party. (1 John 1:4) 

In the past few weeks, I have despaired that my own personal relationship with God seems somewhat of a shambles. Seems being the operative word because, of course, it isn't. God is no smaller, or further away. He has not changed. He is faithful and constant and always working. (John 5:17) He is at work restoring all things. In recent weeks I have lost sight of this big-ness. In the darkness and loneliness of the early hours feeding Sarah, I have lost sight of the hugeness of God's plan. So intent have I become on bemoaning the shift in my relationship with Him, and the failure for Him to fit into my agenda, that I have stopped asking Him what His agenda is. 

I have made him tiny.

This came to a head last week. A friend cancelled on me so I suddenly found myself with a spare hour in which to do my mad cramming-squeezing God routine. I could go on a prayer walk. I could go out for a coffee with my bible. I could hang out with Sarah and listen to some worship music. The possibilities were endless! I determined that it was prime blog-writing time and started to ponder how I was going to communicate this truth of making God tiny. And then, ironically, and somewhat annoyingly, God interrupted my pondering: You're making me tiny right now. You're trying to fit me in to your ever-changing, tightly structured agenda instead of being part of my plan. Instead of asking me what you should do with this time, and how you might join in with my world-changing, you're trying to make me conform to what you want to do. 

Oh dear. 

And so, slightly belligerently, I stopped my plan-making and prayed: well, what do you want me to? 

Of course, it isn't always possible to scrap our plans and commitments. We have jobs, meetings, responsibilities that need our attention and our time management. But I think God's gentle nudge to me, as Strickland's sermon had been, was to say Don't make me tiny. Don't be so intent on creating the times and spaces where you want me to do something that you forget that I am always the one doing, all the time. I am working when you are exhausted and barely able to keep your eyes open as you calm you child; I am working when you don't have time to see a particular person; I am working in the hearts and lives of all around you, and in the whole of the created order. And what's more, if you would only stop and pay attention, you could join in!

And so, this week, I am trying to be alert to the purposes of God. I am trying to do what Jesus did in only doing what the Father is doing - which presumably meant he had to keep asking the Father what he was doing (John 5:19).

I am trying not to make God tiny. 

Colic and Compassion

Our three week old daughter, Sarah, has colic. No one – including doctors and health visitors - seems to quite know what colic really is; a miscellaneous discomfort vaguely connected to trapped wind. It is horrible to watch. When she feeds she screws up her tiny little face, arches her back, writhes and then – of course – screams. And screams, and screams and screams. On Monday she screamed for three hours. I should have swallowed my pride and rung any of the wonderful parents I know admitting defeat and bidding for their help, but fierce independence kicked in and, instead, I simply joined Sarah and sat on the floor and cried. I cried because she was crying. I cried because she was in pain. I cried because I couldn’t make it stop. And because her screech was so loud and so persistent that I thought the neighbours might ring Social Services.

I have struggled with irritable bowels for nearly a decade. Whilst in pain on the loo in the early hours of the morning, I have often questioned why God doesn’t heal me. I have shouted and ranted and raved at him. I have given him the silent treatment. I have been bitter and resentful. But these past few days, I feel like God has spoken something new. In the middle of the night, as Sarah has cried and writhed and I have wanted nothing more than to hide under the covers and go back to sleep, God has shifted something within me: I have sat, remarkably calmly, with my daughter, praying for relief from the pain in her bowels. I have massaged her tummy gently, looked at her tiny, red, screwed-up face with tenderness and thought, I know. I know what that feels like. I know what it is to be frustrated and uncomfortable and to not be able to make it right. Whereas on Monday I felt a deep frustration and anger welling up from the core of my being, instead I have been overcome with love for her. No every time. Not every cry. But more often than not, I have felt what I want to call compassion.

I am not quite sure what compassion is. I don’t think it’s just feeling someone else’s pain. I think it’s something to do with sitting with someone in their pain, with choosing to align yourself with the discomfort of others which isn’t quite the same as trying to fix it. I have not been able to fix Sarah’s colic. Sometimes no amount of burping, massaging, walking, patting will do the trick and we just sit together, waiting it out till it passes.

In Gregory Boyle’s astonishing memoir about his work with gang members in Los Angeles, Tattoos on the Heart, Boyle recounts a conversation with a bunch of teenage inmates about the distinction between sympathy, empathy and compassion. The class go through some examples of the first two, but are silenced by the latter until one inmate says, “Compassion – that’s sumthin’ altogether different. Cause that’s what Jesus did. I mean…Compassion…IS…God.”

I’m not trying to suggest that my own bleary-eyed actions at 4am are the same as the kind of compassion that Jesus shows us. Far from it. But Jesus, in some sense, is only able to have genuine compassion on the people that he meets because he comes close to them. Compassion doesn’t work from a distance. It’s messier than that. If I didn’t know what it was to struggle with bowel pain, it would be hard to share Sarah’s pain and sit with her in it. Similarly – perhaps – Jesus’ compassion for humanity can only be so beautiful and so full because he becomes one of us. He comes to sit with us.

Boyle puts it like this, “Jesus was not a man for others. He was one with others. There is the world of difference in that. Jesus didn’t seek the rights of lepers. He touched the leper even before he got around to curing him. He didn’t champion the cause of the outcast. He was the outcast…the strategy of Jesus is not centred in taking the right stand on issues, but rather in standing in the right place – with the outcast and those relegated to the margins…the Beatitudes is not a spirituality after all. It’s a geography. It tells us where to stand. Compassion isn’t about feeling the pain of others; it’s about bringing them in towards yourself.”

This is altogether more challenging than simply recognising and feeling someone else’s pain; it means we sit with them in the midst of it. To be compassionate as God is compassionate is, as Boyle puts it, a question of geography. With whom do we align ourselves? Where are we standing? Do we watch from a distance and comment on what it what someone’s burdens might be like (sympathy), acknowledge that we have had a similar burden ourselves and thus know what it is like (empathy), or do we do the Jesus thing, the compassion thing, the sumthin’ else altogether?

Scarcity

What we have is enough…and more

If we lack anything, it is the

simple pleasure

To enjoy what we already possess.

Mark Scandrette

Last night, I had a panic about our moses basket.

We had been given a beautiful basket by a friend but for some reason, yesterday, I was suddenly anxious that it wouldn’t be appropriate. What if the mattress was too old and therefore not firm enough? Did we even have the right bedding to go in the basket? Were we supposed to be using those sleeping bag things or blankets or both? The list of questions in my mind spiralled endlessly.

Similarly, a few weeks ago I had a panic about the ‘coming home’ outfit from the hospital. We live in a ridiculously and extravagantly generous community and have been given more baby outfits than one tiny child can ever possibly wear, some brand new and still in their wrapping, ranging from tiny baby all the way up to about 12 months. But I was suddenly overcome by the fear that we had nothing suitable for our poor naked daughter to wear.

You could simply blame such irrational thinking on being heavily pregnant. But I think there is something much deeper going on. I think what I am actually afraid of is much bigger and much more consuming: I am afraid that I do not have enough.

In her book, The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life, Lynne Twist identifies this condition as something she calls scarcity.

“For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is "I didn’t get enough sleep." The next one is "I don't have enough time." Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don't have enough of... Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we're already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with a litany of what we didn't get, or didn't get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack... This internal condition of scarcity, this mind-set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life.”

We live in a culture that constantly – in both obvious and not so obvious ways – tells us that we do not have enough. Most obviously, this applies to our relationship with wealth and material possessions. We simply do not have enough money. We do not have enough stuff. We need the latest, the newest, the most expensive model of just about everything. And we are told this every day from every angle. But, more subtly, this way of thinking filters down into the way we think about other things too: We do not have enough confidence to do that; we do not have enough patience to refrain from shouting at our children; we do not have enough time to invest in the relationships that matter.

I think this way of thinking must make Jesus really sad.

In Twist’s book she describes the remedy to scarcity as “the surprising truth of sufficiency.” Sufficiency is not a set amount of anything; it is “an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and we are enough…it is a consciousness, an attention, an intentional choosing of the way we think about our circumstances.”

Jesus takes this even further. In the economy of the kingdom, the remedy for scarcity, for thinking that we do not have enough and are not enough, is not sufficiency but abundance. Our God is stupidly generous. He is our provider and he delights in being so. In Beautiful Outlaw, John Eldridge draws attention to the first miracle of Jesus as listed in John’s gospel: turning water into wine at a wedding. This is a miracle of extravagant, abundant and (quite frankly) unnecessary generosity. Eldridge explains that Jesus produces the equivalent of 682 litres of wine. That’s 908 bottles. And this is at the end of the wedding. Presumably the party was going to tail off quite soon - or at least it was until Jesus provided an excessive amount of booze – but now it is party time all over again. 908 bottles’ worth of party. And this is “the first of the signs through which [Jesus] revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” (John 2:11)

What is it exactly that the disciples believed at this point? That Jesus liked to party? That he was a miracle-maker? A problem-solver? I have no idea what they were thinking, but something about this outlandish gesture of generosity gets their attention. They start, in some way, to put their trust in him, to believe that, maybe-just maybe, he is who he says he is. He is God. And he is the God who loves to give gifts to his people. He is the God who longs to look after them and be trusted by them. He is the God whose deepest lament is that his people have forgotten who he is (Jeremiah 2:32, 18:13-15) and started to trust in anything, everything, else apart from Him.

Much later on in John’s gospel, Jesus reminds his disciples of his trustworthiness. He is about to leave them. He is about to go to the cross and die and he needs them to know that he can be trusted. He is who he says he is. The sorrow of this difficult and confusing conversation is (understandably) too much for the disciples. They are filled with fear and dread about their precious Jesus leaving and, when Jesus tries to reassure them that he is going ahead of them in order to prepare the way for them, they start to panic:

“Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?” 

(John 14:5-10)

In my mind – and without wanting to superimpose too much onto scripture – there is deep sadness in Jesus’ reply to Philip: “Don’t you know me…even after I have been among you such a long time?” I imagine Jesus locking eyes with his friend and gently saying, Do you still not trust me? Even after all you’ve seen? Even after all the provision I’m made for you? Even after the feeding of multitudes, the calming of storms, the steadiness of me being with you; even after all that, you still don’t trust me.

This morning, as I reflected on my moses basket panic, I felt God ask me the same question: why don’t you trust me?

Mark Scandrette raises the same question in his reflections about how we really, practically live out the teaching of Jesus in an age where His commands have become counter-cultural and seemingly nonsensical. It does not make sense to not be anxious about anything (Matthew 6:25). There seems like a very great deal to be afraid of (John 14:27), and we feel the overwhelming need to cling to what we have rather than be generous to others (Luke 12:33, 16:9, Matthew 6:19-20).

And yet, we like Philip, must make a decision. We must “shed our sense of scarcity” (Practicing the Way of Jesus: Life Together in the Kingdom of Love p.140) and instead choose to trust in the abundant provision of a loving, heavenly Father who knows our every need and longs for us to ask Him to fulfil them. Scandrette warns “if we don’t make conscious choices about our relationship to money and possessions, the forces of a dominant culture will tend to make those choices for us.” (p.144) The dominant force of this culture tells me that I need a new moses basket. I probably need two moses baskets actually. Just in case.

But the Way of Jesus is not the way of culture. Jesus invites us to trust. His is an invitation to live in God’s abundant provision regardless of whether we actually have plenty or not. An invitation to trust that He is enough. His grace is more than we need – not just for our material wellbeing but for our emotional and spiritual wellbeing too. Thus, today’s small step is a response to that invitation: to stop worrying about what we do not have, or might not have, and instead delight in the simple pleasure of enjoying all that we already possess. 

Joy and Sadness

Two things have impacted me quite profoundly in the past month: the first, somewhat ashamedly, is Pixar’s Inside Out; the second is Brene Brown’s thinking about vulnerability. Hamish and I watched Inside Out together a few weeks ago.

I bawled.

Not just those little corner-of-the-eye-tears that can be hastily mopped up, but shoulder-shaking sobs reminiscent of those induced by the first five minutes of Up.

I could blame being pregnant and hormonal (and did), but I genuinely think that Disney’s portrayal of Joy and Sadness touches on something pretty deep within the human condition.

In the film, Sadness’s character is ostracised by the other emotions (Joy, Disgust, Anger and Fear) in Headquarters (the brain of 11 year old Riley). No one can quite see the point in her existence. All she does is make things, well, sad, tainting everything she touches with her blue aura of depression. At one point, Joy even draws a chalk circle and shoves Sadness inside it in a desperate attempt to stop her from contaminating Riley’s memories.

The film takes Joy and Sadness on a journey together through the murky recesses of Riley’s brain until – finally – Joy starts to understand that Sadness has a function. Tears are not inherently bad. Crying is not simply something to be swept under the carpet. Some of our profoundest, and most beautiful, experiences in life are possible only because we experience painful emotion. 

This is not something that I like to admit.

I don’t like being sad. I hate crying. Especially in front of other people. And, most of the time, I wish I could just hide my sadness in a corner (or a chalk circle) and ignore it completely. We don’t want to engage with things that are hard and painful or complicated so – for the most part – we don’t. We do what Joy does to Sadness in Inside Out: ignore, avoid and try to get a handle on it. 

A couple of years ago, I was really struggling with being sad. I can’t quite explain where the sadness came from, but I was just quite sad. It was difficult to talk to other people about because I didn’t really feel like I had a legitimate reason for being sad. Nothing particularly awful or tragic had happened. I just felt down. Life felt grey and slightly pointless and even though the things that I knew to be true were still true (God loved me; Hamish loved me; my friends and family loved me), I couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps they weren’t. I didn’t know how to explain it and was ashamed to try with most people because I feared their judgement or – worse – their helplessness. I didn’t want to superimpose my sadness onto other people in case they felt like they had to try and do something about it, and then felt bad when they couldn’t.

I have deleted and re-written that last paragraph several times because it isn’t something I have admitted to many people and, if I’m honest, I didn’t really have any intention of admitting publicly on a blog. But that, I think, is precisely the point: we don’t know how to talk about sadness. We don’t know what to do with not being ok, and with other people not being ok, so we don’t do anything. Ignore. Avoid. Get a handle on it. That is our strategy.

Which brings me to Brene. A friend recommended one of her TED talks a long long time ago, but I had forgotten about it, and then, last week, my friend Izzy lent me her book, The Gifts of Imperfection. I consumed it in about three days. I can’t do the book justice now, and am hesitant to reduce Brown’s research too much through summarising, but what resonated most with me was Brown’s insistence that when we try to avoid (or numb – her word) the painful emotions of life, we limit our capacity to really feel life’s beautiful emotions. 

She writes, “The most powerful emotions that we experience have very sharp points, like the tip of a thorn. When they prick us, they cause discomfort and even pain…for many of us our first response to vulnerability and pain of these sharp points is to not lean into the discomfort and feel our way through but to make it go away. We do that by numbing and taking the edge off the pain with whatever provides the quickest relief.” (The Gifts of Imperfect, p.70)

All of us have our own “numbing” strategies: the more obvious addictions of alcohol, drugs and food; and the more subtle ones of work, Facebook, perfectionism, and busyness. We use these strategies to cope with pain, with sadness, with thorny feelings that we aren’t sure what to do with. But, and this is the part of Brown’s research that surprised her, when we do this, when we take the edge off our sadness, we dull our capacity to experience joy: “There is no such thing as selective emotional numbing. There is a full spectrum of human emotions and when we numb the dark, we numb the light…joy is as thorny and sharp as any of the dark emotions. To love someone fiercely, to believe something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage with a life that doesn’t come with guarantees – these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain. When we lose our tolerance for discomfort, we lose joy.” (pp.72-73)

I think this is true.

I don’t quite understand why it is true or why we react this way, but I think it is. I recognise in myself the fear of being joyful (which I know sounds paradoxical). Sometimes I am afraid to allow myself to be truly happy. I am afraid to give in to the joy and beauty and wonder of a moment because – in doing so – I acknowledge that the moment might pass, that joy might be lost, that it is transient and unpredictable. Denial becomes a bizarre process of self-protection: to not be joyful is less costly than being joyful and having that joy snatched away. 

In Inside Out, Joy cannot tolerate Sadness. She is terrified of allowing sadness to infiltrate what could otherwise be happy. We do the same thing but, in doing so, we allow our fear of what might be lost to prevent us from ever truly enjoying the thing in the first place: “We’re afraid to lose what we love the most, and we hate that there are no guarantees. We think that not being grateful and not feeling joy will make it hurt less.” (p.82)

Again, I know that I do this. I put a dampener on joy. I cut it off lest it get out of hand and something else cut it off instead. Withholding from myself the full experience of how good and joyful something actually is is my own peculiar self-preservation. It protects me from the potential vulnerability of someone else poking fun at my joy, at my joy being popped and ending up in a heap on the floor.

It is also not very fun.

As ever, I don’t write these things with answers or dogma or solutions. I try and write them with honesty. I want 2016 to be a joyful year, a year in which I cultivate and practice joy and allow myself to feel it. A year in which I am grateful and thankful and celebrate and dare to enjoy the goodness of moments even though they will fade, or perhaps precisely because they will. This does not mean that 2016 will be a year without sadness or hurt, but it is a year in which I want to resolve to allow myself to be joyful: to dance around the living room even though I look silly, to laugh too loudly in places where I shouldn’t, to drink in the moments of our daughter growing up in awe and wonder without fearing about her future, to live, as Brown suggests, wholeheartedly.

Gain

It is difficult to write about death without being morbid. Or complacent. I do not wish to be either of those things. Death is a painful reality for all of us. Especially at Christmas. This is a time when we remember those who used to be with us, when we look back at old photos of Christmas dinner tables that looked very different, when we grieve for those that we miss.

This is good and right. My friend Inge died at Christmas time, and advent is tinged by the sadness of her passing. This time of year reminds me that she isn't here. And that I miss her. Sometimes that missing is a light and beautiful nostalgia; at other times it is the heavy pain of loss. I feel like I might drown in it.

Jesus understood grief. He wept. (John 11:35) When Jesus' friend Lazarus dies, he does not shrug off his death as though it does not matter. Even though he knows that he will raise Lazarus from the grave, he weeps alongside Mary and Martha as they mourn for their brother. He is moved by the sight of their pain and their grief, and he stoops down into the dust so that he can share in it with them. Our God is not unaffected by our pain. He is with us in the midst of it. As we hurt in this hurting world, we are confident that God hurts with us.

But Jesus does raise Lazarus from the dead. There is not just empathy in this story. There is power. There is a hope that transcends death and goes beyond the grave. Death is not the end.

Last week, Hamish reminded me of 1 Peter 3:15, "But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect." My instinctive response to this verse, to a querying of my own hope, is to focus on the hope that I have for this life: hope that no one is beyond the remit of God's grace, hope that transformation is possible in the hardest of hearts, hope that lives can be healed and made whole in the here and now, that God will break into the darkness and bring his beautiful light.

And I do hope for these things. I do hope to see God's goodness in the land of the living (Psalm 27:14), to see God's kingdom come on earth, to catch glimpses of the new creation now.

But last week, my friend's Dad also died. I did not know him well. I had only met him once, at her wedding. His death has challenged my understanding of hope. It has not lessened the hope that I have for this life, but it has reminded me that, ultimately, what Jesus promises us is hope for the next.

As I read Philippians 1 with my god daughter last week, we came to Paul's assertion that 'to live is Christ, to die is gain.' It is easy to gloss over this verse. It has become somewhat sentimentalised, converted into an iconic tattoo that looks good when your sleeves are rolled up but - perhaps - doesn't really mean anything. To Paul, it meant everything. There is nether morbidity nor complacency in his view of death. He does not want to die. He prays that, if it happens, he would be given the courage to face it without being ashamed, and yet he is utterly convinced that death is gain. To die means being with Jesus and that is a whole lot better than his current circumstance hauled up in a prison.

Perhaps these words are easier to write in a prison cell than in the midst of my life. Heaven does sound preferable to chains and misery (although, interestingly, Paul determines that he will live rather than die such is his concern for those whom he has started to tell about Jesus) but, what about me? Do I view heaven as better than what I have at the moment? Better than the joy of an imminent new life; better than friends and family and laughter and the sound of birds singing at dawn; better than watching the sun sink slowly in a haze of pinks; better than the taste of slow-cooked roast lamb; better than the feeling of falling asleep in safety and comfort beside the one that you love.

To live is Christ. To die is gain. His love is better than life. (Psalm 63:3)

For us in the West there is more challenge here than comfort. For our persecuted brothers and sisters suffering under tyranny in Iraq, it is surely the reverse. For those that know the reality of incredible pain and grief, immense pressure and horror, death is gain. To be with Jesus is, as it was for Paul, better. 

I do not know what to do with these words this morning. 

In moments of doubt, of which there are many, I question whether I actually believe in heaven at all. Whether I actually believe in an eternity with Jesus that surpasses any earthly experience, an eternity that would make any sacrifice or suffering or loss for the sake of Christ worth it. Do I actually believe in the bodily resurrection of those who have followed Him? That, in the twinkling of an eye, we are changed, we do meet him, and each other, caught up in the glory of his presence? 

And then I think of Inge. And I think of her dancing. I think of her body free from pain and healed of every trace of cancer. I think of her as a young woman, even though I never knew her then, with arms outstretched in praise, laughing, giddy with the joy of abandon and surrender. And somehow, this is enough. My weak faith is cemented by the certainty she had - even if I cannot claim it fully for myself - that the hope that we have is hope of resurrection. 

Are you listening?

Are you listening?
Excuse me.
I. Said.
Are. You. Listening?

The sharp sound of teacher’s disapproval
The did you hear what I just said?
Quit your daydreaming
Your misty eyed glaze
Your what if what next where to anywhere but here
And listen.

Today
A different voice
Quiet
Strong
Persistent
Gentle

Are you listening?

The voice calls my name

Insistent but not invasive
Easily mistaken for something else
Crowded out by Starbucks’ Christmas Carols
The buzz of busy thoughts
To dos and have dones and whoops I forgot
The voice fades
Slips away
Hidden once more
But still there

Quiet
Strong
Persistent
Gentle

Are you listening?

Not a demand -
a request
Can you spare a minute?
Can I trouble you for a moment of your time?
Can you just… stop?
Stop.
Be still.
Be still. And Know.
Know that I am here.
Know that I am.
I am the One who knows your name.
And you know my voice.

Are you listening?