The box and the present

 I and was amused earlier in the week to watch a young toddler unwrap his present, and then proceed to play with the wrapping paper. Every parent, everyone who has watched children, will smile a wry smile at this; we've seen it before. We've seen it before because we've probably done it before ourselves when young. The box it came in, the paper it was wrapped in, all more fun-filled than the present itself.  Well, boxes provide endless opportunities for creative play, don't they?

And this has a direct parallel with how we might approach the faith. Get so wrapped up in church that God misses out. Become so concerned with the fripperies that the relationship with God never materialises, or suffers as we put all our energy into the secondary stuff, forgetting the primary love, love for God. 

You would think that the Great Commandment makes it clear enough- to love God with all our passion, with all our prayer, with all our energy and all our intelligence ('The Message' translation), but we miss the mark more than hitting it, If our attention isn't on the fripperies, then it's somewhere else altogether, and loving God doesn't come into the picture at all. 

Advent is approaching- a penitential season. Time to take stock- the present inside the box (discovering the love of God again in a new way) or being content with the wrappings, seductive as they are. Seductive, but only wrappings. 

 

 

The swimmer

 On an exercise bike at the gym, I had a good view of the lane swimmers in the pool below- the accomplished, the smooth, the ones who were giving it their all in spite of a lack of proficiency. , ploughing up and down, up and back through the pool. 

I am not a good swimmer. I can make my way in the water, get from one end to the other, but little more. I realised as I watched the swimmers below me that I was more concerned, whilst swimming, to stay afloat, than to pay attention to the style, the efficiency of my strokes. Essentially I still had something of that old fear which I guess we've all had as we learn to swim- will the water hold me up?

I wonder how far this translates as a metaphor for love of God, trusting God, but more especially how my head belief is in tune with what my heart knows . How my love for God (your love for God?)  is infused with some remnant of a false picture of God, some vestiges of an authoritarian figure, or an uncaring one, someone who will let me down at some future point. 

Water has proved countless times it will hold me up. I love that floating experience, just lying there, held up, letting the water take me where it will. But in  my head there's still a doubt. Maybe we will never entirely rid ourselves of false notions of God, until we see 'face to face'. I have enough of the truth to know I am held up, and as I live in the waters of grace, I hope some of the falsity, the doubt, disappears. 

  

Passing a milestone

 It felt like a small victory over decrepitude when I saw the drop of blood  from my finger sink into the green liquid in the test tube; my iron levels were good enough to allow me to donate blood. It was almost more important to have a decent iron level than to donate this, my fiftieth pint. The iron level was the marker that must be passed.  

I started donating late, and will never reach a hundred pints; the regular sixteen week visits to various large halls filled with donors like me, interrupted in recent years by anti-malarial pills which necessitated a six-month break; but fifty is a satisfying number. Still, sixty would be better, so I'll keep on donating. Who knows, maybe sixty-five....... 

I had thought I might stop giving once I had reached the magic fifty pints. But no, the call is still there, in an email- formulaic, and sent to everyone who has reached this milestone- and so I'll go on as long as I reasonable can. 

The call of God works in a similar way- I come so far, thinking I've answered it, and find the call still goes on, find that Christ is still ahead of us, that there is road to travel yet.   

A wide mercy

Among the unlikely candidates for guiding me onto the Christian path I would place the 1944 Education Act, with its stipulation that there should be a daily act of worship in each school. This was where I learned my first hymns, still remembered today, and such an important part of the formation of a heart and mind attuned to God. 

It helped of course, that I loved to sing- still do- and that daily assembly at primary and secondary school channelled a love of singing into a proto-love for God. It gave the Spirit stuff to work on to awaken me more fully to the love of God, so that words sung became at last words believed, words experienced. 

All our experience is grist to the mills of the Spirit, to bring us to God. As I listen to people telling me how their story became part of God's story, no two are the same, and many have a part introduced by a phrase such as 'it may seem unlikely but....'. 

The wide mercy of God is able to harvest all our experience, in order to capture us into the love which frees.  

 

behind the words

 It struck me again this week that words are a mask as much as a revelation. I was reading Niall Williams' book 'As it is in heaven'- a beautifully told, deft and delicate love story, which might almost be a parable for the love of God, the grace of God. 

Stephen tells Gabriella 'I love you'. A phrase heard a thousand times a day. But as I read it I wondered, as we are such complex beings, what else he meant by it. Did he mean 'I need you'. What demands did the phrase bring with it, on top of the self-giving implicit therein? Well, no need to answer that particular instance, but it's worth reflecting on as a general enquiry- what else is being brought to the table when those lovely words 'I love you' are spoken?

When we talk of God, we talk of the perfect. So I wonder if God is the only one with the unalloyed right to say 'I love you' and have no other agenda. And where that leaves me, what my response might be, should be, could be. Awe/questions/doubts/surrender/resistance- these will occupy me for a while, head and heart being so small. My conversion is far from complete, mixed messages being my speciality. .        

cleaning

A week and more has passed since The Dog (our son's black Labrador) has returned to its owner; great was the rejoicing at the reunion. Since then, inter alia, we have been cleaning, and been surprised at where dog hairs have lodged themselves. Carpets, rugs- fair do's. Ditto the filter in the drier, although a frown crosses my forehead a week after his departure as hairs still show up there, 

But how come I discover dog hairs on the mattress, under where sheets, mattress topper, etc have been? 

Aware as I am of the shortcomings of my life, I see this as an illustration of the pernicious nature of that old fashioned word 'sin', which clings so closely, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it. I remain grateful therefore for the multiple ways of grace which keep me more or less tidy in the sight of God; those spiritual parallels to soap, hoovers, scouring  pads, mops and the whole armoury of cleaning stuff we use in our houses.      

Expectation

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a healthy Labrador, in possession of all its faculties, must be in want of food. Well, universally acknowledged, or more accurately, confirmed, at this address this week as we have looked after my son's Number One dog (of two) and seen lightning-speed activity any time there is the merest shadow of a hint that food may be being prepared or eaten in the next two nano-seconds. 

It could be scraps, or a treat; it could be a more substantial meal. Whatever, there is the expectation that whether the food is for human or canine consumption, there will be some, at least, that is destined for the pooch. It never fails.   

The expectation of being fed- I mean in a spiritual way. And of always being fed. I wonder if this is something of our experience? Or does our expectation of God wane at times, to the point where God passes out of mind, and being fed by the hand of God becomes of no importance at all. 

The pooch has something to teach me here........