Doubting

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me for ever?
   How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
   and have sorrow in my heart all day long? 

 (Psalm 13: 1-2)

How long will this last? How long will we have to wait? How long will God seem to hide from me? How long until things improve? How long until it is right again? How long... how long... how long...?

In my last post I was suggesting that while ‘waiting’ is a very positive discipline, it can also have negative effects.

There is a verse in Proverbs; ‘Hope deferred makes the heart sick’ (Proverbs 13: 12).

Ah yes indeed!

But while that is true it is also true that hope deferred is not the same as hope denied.

True, but not always easy to hang onto.

When we are in situations of difficulty, suffering, longing, desperation, etc. waiting can be very difficult... and can lead to doubt. Will God ever answer my prayer? Does God really care? Is God there at all?

Doubt creeps in and seems to gnaw away at our faith.

However, the older I get and the longer I continue on this journey of faith the more I wonder if doubting is always to be feared, or avoided, or regarded as a ‘bad thing’.

My own experience is that periods of doubt have unsettled me, disturbed me, worried me... but have also led me to new perspectives on faith, new understandings of discipleship and new experiences in my relationship with God.

Doubting, it seems to me, is a necessary part of faith.

Waiting

Wait for the Lord;
   be strong, and let your heart take courage;
   wait for the Lord! (Psalm 27: 14)

If longing and hoping are very much Advent themes, then so is waiting. But for most of us for most of the time, waiting is not easy. Like children on a long car journey we can end up incessantly asking ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

We do not live in a world where waiting is much valued. Everything seems to be ‘instant’. And – by and large – that is how we like it; instant coffee, instant ready-meals, instant gratification, instant credit....

... and the availability of instant credit (for example) means we no longer need to wait until we have ‘saved up’ before indulging our desire for whatever it is we would like to purchase.

But for some things we simply have to wait... there is no hurrying them by wishing they would come faster. They just take their time. Even the most excited child cannot make Christmas come any more quickly by wishing for it, or by opening all the doors on the Advent Calendar!

One of the reasons I choose to delay the putting up of Christmas decorations and the singing of Christmas carols until late in Advent is as a reminder of our need to wait and not ‘jump the gun’! I want to allow Advent to be this time when we explore longing and hoping and waiting and much more besides, rather than prematurely being all about Christmas!

Amongst other things, it serves as a wee reminder that God’s people had to wait for generation upon generation before their longing for the coming of Messiah was fulfilled (and even then it was not at all as they had expected!)

But waiting is not always easy.

Waiting can strengthen faith and can be an important spiritual discipline. But it can also lead to despair and loss of faith.

What makes the difference? I guess that would be a sermon – or a book – in itself! But one thing I do think is that the elimination of the need for waiting from much of our daily lives and the premature focus on the nativity story does not do much to help us to learn to positively and faithfully wait.

But I also wonder if the negative effects of waiting are also part of the story that we need to explore. 

It is all too easy to imagine God’s people waiting for centuries for the fulfilment of the ancient prophecies and imagine them watching, waiting, praying and longing; always looking to the heavens for the promise to be fulfilled. But in fact they often rebelled, rejected God, relied on themselves and turned to false gods.

No. Waiting is not always easy.

Hoping

 

Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.                                                                             Romans 5: 5

In yesterday’s post I was speaking about that deep, mysterious sense of longing that human beings have; a longing for... well, for what? And when it comes to interesting questions, another would be why do we have this sense of longing? And where and how does it find its fulfilment? And so on...

...but that was yesterday!

Today I have turned to hope.

But are longing and hoping not the same?

Well, it may seem that way if we use the word ‘hoping’ to mean a wistful (but far from certain) wish that something ‘nice’ will occur. And if that is also how we use the word ‘longing’, then the confusion is obvious!

But surely that is not what it means to hope? Well, at least, not in the context of the Christian faith, where hope is to do with God’s promises... God’s as yet unfulfilled promises.

Advent is often (and rightly) regarded as a Season of Hope. Yes indeed. But this ‘hoping’ is different from the inner longing of which I wrote yesterday and different too from the wistful wishing that is commonly confused with hoping.

Our hoping is an act of faith, founded on God’s promises. These promises may remain – for the time being- unfulfilled. But still we hope.

Someone once said ‘hope is faith in the future tense’.

‘Hoping’ is active; we choose it; we do it.

Longing

“In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you... the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both... it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

This brief quote does not do justice to C S Lewis’ concept of ‘Sweet Desire’, which he describes as an intense longing for something that we have not as yet experienced.

Something about this season of Advent on which we have now started speaks to me of this longing, this yearning for something that cannot be defined or described, because we have not yet experienced or encountered it.

It is that sense of there being ‘something more’, another place or experience that we vaguely discern but know that we have never experienced or encountered... so far. So we long for this ‘yet to be and yet to come’ state or place.

Is it perhaps this we see in the Old Testament prophets as they looked for and longed for the coming of Messiah and the ushering in of the Messianic realm? Is it what the elderly Anna and Simeon were awaiting as they kept their long watch in the Temple until they encountered the infant Jesus?

In the music West Side Story, Tony sings the song ‘Something’s Coming’.

                ‘It’s only just out of reach,

                 Down the block,

on a beach,

under a tree...’

It is that sense that something is coming, but it is just beyond our physical, mental or emotional grasp... but perhaps not quite beyond our spiritual grasp?

And we long for it.

I felt that inner pang this morning, perhaps in part because when I looked out on the winter scene here at Nethy Bridge (photo above) where we are having a short break, I felt that strange longing / desire / pang within, and partly because it is the beginning of Advent when we remember the longing of all who looked for the coming of Messiah, and acknowledge our own longing for the coming of his realm of peace and justice... the yearning for that which we can only just discern but not yet fully experience... the reaching out to that which is beyond our grasp, but which we sense is there and is coming.

Discerning the Dangers

Some considerable time ago, I posted on my blog ‘Life in the Echo Chamber’ (http://suitcasesojourner.blogspot.com/2018/01/) in which I made mention of the dangers of some uses of social media, although – in the end - that particular post took a slightly different turn, and did not end up focussing on social media.

But recently I have returned to thinking about this issue.

I have a huge amount of respect and affection for my circle of family and friends, not to say trust in them to be respectful and tolerant.

...and yet...

I am aware of very distinct and even diametrically opposed views being expressed on social media by close friends or family, which is fine if it is done respectfully and responsibly and if it is all about the ‘issue’ and not about the person. But when it comes to matters of politics (yes, including Brexit and Scottish Independence!) or matters of ethical or faith positions, then it is too easy for us to feel threatened or angry or dismayed, and then ‘personalise’ the argument.

And, anyway, nuanced dialogue and respectful listening are not easy on social media!

We need to discern the dangers!

This was brought home to me some time ago when I sat down (mobile phone in hand) to watch a documentary on TV. I had been looking forward to this documentary as it looked like it would present the case for something in which I strongly believed (oh, yes, I know, back to the echo chamber!).

In truth, it did present the case!

But (in my view) the editing and production did it no favours and seemed (IMHO!) to make the presentation of an excellent case theatrical, unbelievable and almost cartoonish.

I made the mistake of expressing some of my dismay on social media. But not well enough to avoid finding  myself the focus of accusations of somehow attacking the case being presented (which I support) or of deriding those presenting the documentary (whom I know to be very good, fine and knowledgeable people for whom I have a lot of respect and whose views I largely agree with).

People had confused my criticism of the production (which I saw as undermining the case it sought to present) with the issue itself and those who were presenting it. But – of course - I now see that this was way too subtle a distinction to be attempting on social media, especially when fired off one one’s mobile phone while sitting getting irritated on one’s couch in the middle of the broadcast!

Careful listening, focussed attentiveness, nuanced understandings and respectful dialogue are not easy in our world.

Social media does not help.

But careful listening, focussed attentiveness, nuanced understandings and respectful dialogue have never been more necessary.

Yes, we need these things, but they are not best served by our current social media/sound bite/spin dominated information provision. (And, sadly, that seems to increasingly affect and infect the church too).

There may be times and places for quick fire responses on social media. But they are limited.

We need to discern the dangers.

And we also need to find and make spaces and places for careful listening, focussed attentiveness, nuanced understandings and respectful dialogue.

Consumer Choices

In the course of my sermon this morning, I made a passing remark about our consumer society.

I have been thinking about it all a bit since that sermon.

While I enjoy the many choices we have, am one of those who shops around for a good deal (despite my supermarket loyalty card) and make use of comparison websites (I even have a collection of cuddly meerkat toys!) I get a little uncomfortable at the way in which a consumer approach has affected so much of our lives.

The consumer society’s values do not sit well with the values of loyalty, commitment, constancy, endurance, faithfulness etc.

Which are we called to as God’s people; Kingdom values or consumer society values?

Of course, there are times and circumstances when the right thing to do is to move on, whether with regard to relationships or churches; when we find ourselves being drained of life, abused, giving all but still feeling used, and we have stuck with it and tried everything and yet there remains no life, no light, no love. I am not advocating that people should remain forever in abusive relationships or in abusive churches. Not at all.

But that does not detract from my belief that we are called to faithfulness, commitment and constancy in our relationships and in our congregations.

A consumer approach to our committed relationships or to our church engagement, which sees us constantly shopping around for a new lover or a new church or whatever, does not seem to me to be how God calls us to live.

Pleasant Places

‘The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places’ (Psalm 16 vs 6)

We have just returned from a few days of leave on the Isle of Skye. In times past it was a rare year when we did not visit Skye at least once. In some ways it became a kind of ‘spiritual home’, Sadly, it is over 5 years since we were last there, but having spent these last few days on this amazing island, I suspect that it will once again become a place of regular ‘pilgrimage’. The beauty of the scenery, the re-connection with friends, the worship at the local church, the long walks – all these were food for the soul and deeply refreshing and re-creative.

To think of Skye as a ‘pleasant place’ seem altogether inadequate by way of description of a place of such dramatic beauty and rugged scenery. But in a deeper sense, Skye is indeed a ‘pleasant place’ which, over the years, became for us somewhere that feels like a gift of God, a source of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual renewal.

Over recent weeks I have been reflecting a lot on ‘pleasant places’. Looking back over our lives and my ministry I can see that not all the places to which we have been called, to which we have journeyed and in which we have spent time have been ‘pleasant’ in a normal human sense. And yet, while some of the areas in which we have lived as a family have not seemed outwardly ‘pleasant’,  often the people amongst whom we have lived, to whom we have ministered, with whom we have worshipped or of whom we became friends have transformed these locations and they became for us ‘pleasant places’ indeed!

And then there were other places where the work of ministry was not always easy and yet the environment and relationships were very ‘pleasant’, compensating in many ways for the struggles of ministry.

In yet other situations what was a very pleasant place in all respects for one of us, was not so pleasant for the other!

However, looking back over the past four decades and more, the overall sense is of being led by God to situations of challenge (sometimes), good friendships (often), and fulfilment (frequently). Almost always there has been that sense of being in the ‘right place’ – even when the going was tough. Pleasant places? Yes, I think so.

And now, with probably only two  or so years to go until I retire, I find myself back where it all started. As an Interim Minister I have been placed in a congregation in the South Side of Glasgow to assist them in their journey through a time of transition as they seek to come to terms with the past and set the course for the future. Although this congregation is a union of several congregations, one of the component parts, many of the members and the building in which it meets are all very familiar to me, for it is where I was baptised, nurtured in faith, first professed faith, sensed a call to ministry and preached my first sermons. How unexpected and wonderful (not to say, somewhat surreal!) is that?

So it has now all come full circle as – in the providence of God’s plan - I  return to somewhere that was in these formative years a ‘pleasant place’, full of hope that now, at the end of my ministry, it will once again prove to be a ‘pleasant place’.