And the rain falls.
Shrouded in loss,
Fear and despair creep.
And the rain falls,
Relentless, consuming
Undiscriminating
Encircling, constant.
Inescapable.
The rain falls.
We shelter, run for cover, hide
Grasping for protection
Searching for hope as
The rain falls.
You. Felt the rain.
Heard the pain.
Bore the stain.
Will come again.
Even as the rain falls.
Yesterday we had the sad news that Tim, one of our church family, died of cancer on Sunday night. Although we knew he just had months to live it still came as a shock. We grieve with his family and long for a world free from pain and sorrow like this. I didn’t know Tim very well but I greatly respected and admired the Tim I did know. Tim became a Christian 3 years ago and was an inspiringly authentic Christian, his faith really did change him, he prayed prayers that were genuine, not polished with Christian jargon learnt over years. His faith seemed to really have an impact on the way he lived his life that I learnt loads from. I will miss his humility, his gentle teasing and his honest faith.
When he discovered he had cancer he described a night of worry, of battling and then a real experience of peace from God, knowing that he was in safe hands. You can hear about that and more here, as he spoke of his prognosis at a guys evening at church. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t perfect but his life left a mark on mine and I’m grateful. I’m also grateful for a moment after a talk I’d given on Heaven at our Church in a Pub, I was talking about Isaiah 25:6-10, verses that Tim hadn’t seen before. I loved the smile in his eyes as he talked to me after. Tim loved wine and had discovered in excitement some verses that made heaven seem a little bit more tangible.
“On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine
the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The LORD has spoken.
In that day they will say,
“Surely this is our God;
we trusted in him, and he saved us.
This is the LORD, we trusted in him;
let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”
He finally gets to taste that wine now and we are left in sorrow that he is not with us any more, but we have a sorrow tinged with hope, knowing that one day we’ll see him again, and one day we too will taste that finest of wines and have our God wipe away the tears from our eyes.
Confidence is a tricky concept. Ideally we’d all love to be confident in the reality of what we believe and confident to live consistently within that framework. This way of living seems fairly elusive most of the time. When confidence is found in the self we tend to swing between a lack of confidence, swayed this way and that by the people around us or we retain an unhealthy confidence in our rightness in situations which really ask us to step off our soapboxes and reach out in love. I think there might be a third way. I hope there is at least. Taking confidence away from the self and putting it in something outside ourselves seems to offer more stability and hope.
In our Psalm David expresses deep confidence in the reality of his God. He knows God and what he is like and so he is able to say that his heart is steadfast. He sings out praise to God even before his requests are answered, and, if we look down further into the Psalm, in a time when it seems God has rejected his people. David doesn’t moan and whinge at God, he declares to all that God is still God, his love is great, his faithfulness stretches to the skies and his glory is to be above all. This is a confidence far beyond a confidence in David’s army, his Kingship or greatness. This is a confidence in someone else and it’s an exuberant confidence meant to draw David’s people into dependence on this God.
When it looks like David has been abandoned by God, he doesn’t follow suit, he carries on praising and crying out to him for help. He’s confident in a answer and in deliverance. We’re almost bound to ask the question, why? Because he knows that the help of man is worthless and with God we will gain the victory. There isn’t any other place to go, there isn’t any other hope but the God whose love is great and whose faithfulness reaches to the skies.
All this leads me to think, where is my confidence in this life? Where is my confidence as I interact with the people around me. If it’s in me I’m going to be all over the place, worried about what I look like, how I come across, who likes me, who doesn’t like me. It’s really going to be all about me. If my confidence is in God I will be able to walk into life with freedom, not bound by what others think or say, knowing that even in the times when it feels like he’s far away I can know his love is higher than the heavens and he’s involved in this world.
I’m sure that process isn’t an overnight thing, once more we don’t have the luxury of a download into our brain to enable us to suddenly know for sure that we are loved and to dance freely through this life because of that. It’s a struggle and a battle. It’s a one day forward, the next day back, it’s a rollercoaster, it’s a maze, but through the battling there is our God. Knowing him better, getting to know his character more and more, dwelling in our relationship with him will build confidence in him as we walk with him through this life.
To Ponder:
What are you tempted to put confidence in?
How does that affect your relationships/approach to life?
What does it mean to be confident in God in this world?
What hope does that give us?
1991 was 20 years ago.
I am still trying to come to terms with this. Mainly because it still seems so fresh in my memory. It was the 1990s, the decade which was supposed to lead us into moon colonisation, hover boots and more, the boom of the 80s was over, Thatcherism was dead, the Gulf war and the end of the Cold War dominated the news. Was there a New World Order embracing us? The Soviet Union was dissolved as the age of communism came to an end. Eastern Europe was born and the changing political landscape included space for hope and possibility (before the heavy weight of capitalism and corruption took over). The music scene changed dramatically. Out with the 80s overindulgence, out with big hair, out with pomp and out with overly long guitar solos. The new sounds were smart, tight and cynical. The best description of U2s Actung Baby! called it the sound of the Joshua Tree being cut down with a chainsaw. Music sounded exciting again and I turned 13. My teenage self was born.
This being the era of cassette tapes (CDs were still out of my price range) we spent a lot of time working out if the tape player was chewing the tape at the start of ‘Actung Baby!’ distortion, anger and sirens exploded into our heads and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the laughing gas or indeed what was next but I liked it. The album is as fresh as ever, my heart still breaks at ‘One’, I love the cynical lyrics, (“in my dreams I was drowning sorrows, but my sorrows they learned to swim”, “it’s no secret that a conscience can sometimes be a pest”) I love that the hit single from the album is tucked away in track 7, a hangover from the days of 2 sides to albums. I can’t understand how this was made 20 years ago. 20 years…
I’ve just realised that Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten albums were released in 1991 as well. Which is good for my memory because in my memory the early 90s were really all about the cheesy sounds that emerged from 2 Unlimited and Culture Beat.It turns out I was wrong. There really was good music around back then.
Anyway seeing as we are in a crazy era of digital times head to this playlist and bathe in some quality moments from 1991. That’s marginally cheaper and more legal than copying the album and sending it to you all. (maybe the lack of product era we are in isn’t so bad after all…)
I’m starting to think that there might be something in the idea of contentment. Awhile ago on holiday with friends I came down to breakfast despairing that I’d ever be able to live being single for the whole of my life. I was prepared to go for it, to accept I’d not meet someone that way, that I could live life well loving friends and knowing the joys and sorrows of the single life, but I didn’t think I could muster up the strength to do it all today. My very gracious friends laughed at me, sometimes the best idea, and told me I just had to be content today, tomorrow, well, tomorrow will worry about itself. Good advice. The thing is, that advice never ends. We never have the perfect life situation, whether we want to be married, have babies, want our kids to leave home, want them to come back home, whether we want to live in this city or that city, to get a job, to leave a job. Whatever our lives look like externally we know that things could be different, changed in someway. Contentment with today right now is the most elusive concept of all.
Partly that’s to do with the ache of living in a broken world which isn’t right yet, which is groaning itself waiting for the day when it will be renewed. Partly it’s also to do with our desire for control over our destiny, over the shape our lives will take. We live frustrated with the very small amount of control we really have in this world. There are so many things we want that lie outside our grasp or ability to change. We really are quite small. There are as ever tensions to be walked through. The complicated world of decision making, what we can do vs what we have no control over, is a minefield of hope and despair.
There is, however, sense in looking at the life we have today, in accepting that in today, whatever externals lie around us, we have meaning and purpose because we have a God who has stepped into our world and has called us to live and love in this space called Today. He is the one who knows the future and has it in his hands. He is the one who called us into today and has ways for us to walk in today.
I’m not saying this is easy, it’s a battle not to live in the agony of hopes not realised, in desires frustrated and in a world that says we must have x y and indeed z to be happy and fulfilled. It’s a battle worth fighting though. We are loved, we are secure, we are delighted in and we have purpose that isn’t dependent on having z y and z but on the call of our God giving us people to love, ways to walk and best of all, Himself to know today. I think that’s where contentment begins and where we are lead into a place of real living out of the confines of our own little worlds.
James as ever puts it pretty bluntly:
13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
We’re also told this in Ephesians 2:
10For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesusfor good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
What are those ways marked out for you to walk in today?
More questions I have about contentment, because clearly a blog post isn’t going to sum up the multidimensional nature of this topic. Come on, lets blow our minds on these…
How do we live with the tension between being able to influence our lives in some small degree and being ok when we can’t do that? Does contentment lead me to not take responsibility for what I can do to affect change in my life? Will it just lead me to bum around? What does contentment lead to? Does it naturally lead to love as it takes the focus off my situation and frees me to look out for others? Is a lack of contentment a inherently selfish thing as it’s focused on me and my world? Do I really want to answer that question? Apparently godliness with contentment is great gain, where is the place for ambition and striving to do more with your life in that?
The Long Walk Home 