Infinite grace and freedom

 By a roundabout route, I have come this week to understand more of the scope of grace, and my limitless (note that word) freedom-in-God. I'm a big fan of arte.tv, the pan-european tv network, which although it doesn't broadcast live to the UK, has a wonderful i-player facility. This week I caught up with a programme on the the death marches from Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45. As the soviets advanced westward, concentration camps were abandoned, and inmates- no, let's call them prisoners- were forced to march under guard back to other camps on German soil. Thousands died on the way, either from exhaustion, disease, or were shot by the guards. Often the villages they marched through treated them despicably. If a train was provided, it was open cattle wagons; this in the middle of winter. I groaned at many points, shocked by what I had not known before. 

The depth of human depravity shocked me afresh. The depth of what we can do is only limited by our human finity. God has truly given us freedom of will and action -including the freedom to be as depraved as we care to be. But thankfully, the grace and mercy of God is far more extensive than even the deep, deep depths of our human depravity. It is limitless. These are easy words to say; I suspect many of us will have trotted them out without thought to what we have affirmed. This week I realised more of the dimensions of grace and freedom-in-God. That it is limitless became more real.   

Ok, slow learner. But still learning, and more thankful, more wanting to explore a bigger dimension. 

sunset

 It's been a week or more of spectacular sunsets here, which I am privileged to watch straight out of the front window. Every afternoon from about four to five o'clock this free show unfolds before me low on the horizon.  All different of course, in colour, form, intensity, length and breadth, in their interaction with cloud. All never to be repeated in exactly the same form. 

The casual glory is astounding. Why should this green and blue planet have  awesome sunrises, sunsets? Yes, I know it's to do with science, meteorology, and probably other -ologies besides, but it's not inevitable, is it, that we should be faced with such unnoticed, unrepeatable beauty day after day? Surely it's a gift?

'The heavens declare the glory of God' says the psalmist. Understated, but true in my book. Pointing to God's playfulness, inexhaustible creativity, wonder, desire for his creatures to enjoy life and beauty; point back to himself. It's something of a self portrait, not complete, but hinting at his personality. Rembrandt, in his fifty nine self portraits plumbed the depths of his own personality over a lifetime like no-one before or since, but these divine portraits just give us hints. Large ones, on a massive canvas, but whispers, maybe love letters, to those who would read them aright. There is still something to explore beyond all the -logies .        

the thought police

 I'm struck this week in the gospel narrative by the activities of the religious thought police. They're everywhere, squeezing into the back of the crowd to monitor, make note of, Jesus' activities, so threatening to the status quo. Not afraid to be seen, either- they question him at what seems like every opportunity; 'who are you? what right have you to do this? the law says otherwise!'

In truth, it's a role which most of us will have adopted at one time or another, although some have made it their life's work to make sure the rules/the prevailing culture/the law are adhered to, and preferably to the very last detail. In the end it's a joyless occupation, with bitterness and suspicion at its root. 

By contrast the impetus of the Spirit of God has about it a freedom, a joy, a life-affirming quality, I could do with it in bucket loads. There's a cynicism in the present culture, and God is far from front and centre. If only there were more instances of life-affirming joy in the endless dimensions of the kingdom! If only..... well, it could begin with me, although it would give the present-day religious thought-police reason to be active.....   

The crib

 The Magi arrived on schedule at the crib on Thursday morning, having travelled a few inches every day across the coffee table towards their destination. Everyone will have their own stories about their children's grasp (or otherwise) of what the Christmas crib scene meant; the two which remain for Mary and I are that the Magi were first understood as 'the grandads', a term which occasionally resurfaces as we contemplate the scene; and that an earlier stable, since replaced, with straw on the floor, seemed a suitably agricultural venue to run a toy tractor through, disturbing the peace of the Holy Family as they were knocked over........

There is something almost complete in the scene now- all the actors are there. It appears crowded, almost excited (and why wouldn't it be?) from certain angles. The latest stable- they have all been modelled from cardboard boxes and needed replacing after a while- is by far the smallest, hence the crowded feeling. All it requires is you, me, to be there. 

If you can imagine the scene in your mind, with all the 'extras'- animals, shepherds, wise men, an angel floating above,-where would you put yourself?  What, or who, are you drawn to in the scene? Do you see what shepherds and Magi see- someone beyond a baby?  

hidden, ordinary

 After the extraordinary portents surrounding Jesus' birth, he sinks into obscurity for about 30 years- about ninety percent of his earthly life- before he begins his public ministry. That is, apart from the pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem when he was about twelve, as recorded by Luke. 

These hidden years, these ordinary years, have had stories stamped on them of fantastical incidents- all found outside the canonical gospels. All dismissed as unlikely. Curiosity about this hidden life is natural, but it will have to stand as it is, a message to us that the ordinary, the routine, the repetitive, the unexciting, the workaday; all this is a fertile field for God. Luke records that it was in this period that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, finding favour with God and neighbour. 

This new year will start with high hopes, heightened perhaps by the restrictions of recent times. Hopes of a resumption of a more .'normal' routine may have influenced our wishes for 2022. But it will be, as it always is, that in the ordinary, the routine, the unexciting, the repeated task, the workaday, that we grow in wisdom, in the favour of God and neighbour. Doing little things with great love, as Mother Teresa had it. Well, these little things account for ninety percent of life. Probably more.  .   

A collision of times

 This weekend devout time and secular time coincide, though for different reasons. For the devout in the faith, after all the preparation of Advent, joy and gladness will have blossomed in the celebration of the birth of Christ. For the secular minded, food and drink and self-indulgence in a time of covid, as well as a celebration of family, will have come to the fore. 

The coinciding of these times will come to an end by next weekend. The devout in the faith will still have five days to take in the enormity of Christmas, before the times move on to Epiphany. The secular mind and heart will be thinking about and planning next year's holiday, as the daily papers and tv ads are filled with glamorous and sun-filled destinations for next year's summer vacation. 

And these two mind-sets, the devout and the secular, will not meet again until this time next year. Both have their rhythms. For the secular, the rest of the year is taken up by planning for the summer holiday, and the fulfilment of the same. There is a minor diversion for the chocolate feast of Easter to welcome spring, before summer holidays come more forcefully to mind the nearer to summer we are. And come September, minds and hearts turn to planning for Christmas, this becoming more insistent once Hallowe'en- a minor diversion- is over. For the devout, times of reflection, preparation and stripping back to essentials (Advent and Lent) will be followed by seasons of joy (Christmas, Easter) and quieter periods of learning and consolidation (Epiphany, Trinity). 

Both are rich in planning and execution, anticipation and fulfilment, cost and satisfaction. And truth to tell, the boundaries between these two visions is often blurred. Covid times have dented the application of the the secular model- holidays cancelled, families unable to meet; efforts are redoubled to make it work. Human effort. In the devout, much, most of the work is divine; we surrender to a movement of God. Let each find joy as they can. 

The graced ordinary revisited

 More evidence of  'the graced ordinary' this week; ordinary lives well-lived, doing the best they can in ordinary and sometimes extraordinary circumstances. I first became aware of this in the novels of the late (and to my mind great) Kent Haruf, and the still-alive Marilynne Robinson. The ordinary folk- the parents, the neighbours, the siblings of the person in the middle of the story are never the heroes, but form the moral centre of those books, while around them uncertainties, dilemmas, wrong turnings play out, with the graced, ordinary background lives to somehow anchor the chaos, bring the ship, in whatever state, to port. 

Thursday's gospel reading from the lectionary was the first verses of Matthew. Those dry, dull verses which give one account of the genealogy of Jesus. forty two generations, neatly arranged, of fathers and their sons who in turn became fathers, and only four women among them. But it struck me, in this line from Abraham to Jesus, that simply by living, marrying and having sons who in their turn married and had sons; all this somehow forwarded the purposes of God, brought the day of salvation nearer, until it was fulfilled in Jesus. 

Some of those names were notable, a few were heroes, but most were only a name, recorded as a son and a father. The graced ordinary- there's much to say for it as it brings forward the purposes of God.  

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