How would you cope?

Currently I am reading a book called “Outpost of Occupation”, written by Barry Turner. It shows how the Channel Islands survived Nazi rule during the years 1940 to 1945. It was of particular interest to me because I was born in Guernsey.

It is shocking to read of the terrible deprivation that those in the Islands faced during the war, especially after D-Day, when mainland France was cut off and could no longer supply any resources either to the German garrison or to the islanders. Today we take it for granted that essentials and even luxuries will be freely available. Yet only a few generations ago there were people just like us, people whose families we may have known, for whom utter starvation was often only days away. It is more painful still to read of all the crises of conscience that went with the situation – the moral dilemmas that faced people during those desperate days. Even doing a basic kindness could mean arrest and death for both the helper and the one helped.

Yes, there is so much that we take for granted. We can ask many questions: how would we react? How would we survive? Would it make or break our characters? Would we help others or push them aside in a desperate bid for self-preservation? These are things that very often we can never know until we are put to the test.

When the time comes, will we be found sufficient or will we be found wanting? Sometimes we are such a puzzle to ourselves that we simply have to rely on our sovereign God knowing all about us, understanding and being patient with us.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Psalm 139:13-16 NIV

For our part all we can do is fortify ourselves against the day of calamity with a living faith in the Saviour. Beyond that we can only trust that a true sense of values, guided and shaped by God, will see us through in the end.

To encourage us, God offers us Himself as an inspiration. The Lord Jesus Christ had everything when He was with His heavenly Father in glory. He let all of that go, even His dignity and His physical well-being, in order to sacrifice Himself for us and to win for us forgiveness and newness of life. It is very hard to imagine what it cost Him. No ordinary mortal has ever started from such heights and been brought to such depths – and then ascended again!

As we come back to our own situations, often really quite pampered, we can think of our Lord and what He willingly surrendered to make us spiritually rich. We should also remember that our fellow human beings, not far from us, are even now undergoing friction, deprivation, desperate times. Often the reason is not the high-flown politics that the news presenters love to attribute regional conflicts to. On the ground, the cause of conflict may equally likely be a squabble over limited resources.

May God help us to be realistic about who we really are, to appreciate all that we have, to steward it wisely, and to ensure that the world has its fair share. It may well be in our own interests on earth and it will be building up treasures in heaven. Our incentive is that God has no intention of being mean towards you and me in heaven simply because we lived in a rich country on earth. Charles Wesley, the sweet singer of sovereign grace, once wrote these lines:

Thou waitest to be gracious still;

Thou dost with sinners bear,

That, saved, we may Thy goodness feel,

And all Thy grace declare.

Its streams the whole creation reach,

So plenteous is the store,

Enough for all, enough for each,

Enough for evermore.

Sin – a taboo subject?

A younger friend of mine and her family are trying to find their way into church life. “The trouble with the church we’ve been going to,” she complains, “is that they keep talking about sin. It frightens my daughter.”

These days, the world’s easy-going view of sin gives the word an aura of enticement and daring. It is the name chosen by at least one nightclub in the UK. Another friend refers to a tasty treat that is laden with calories as “sinful squares”. A person who dabbles in a bit of sin is credited with a sense of adventure, imagination, fulfilment.

In the Bible, however, sin wears a much more repugnant and disturbing aspect. It isn’t even just limited to the odd acts of swearing or stealing or lust. It is nothing less than a way of life that we inherit at birth and that makes us all fall short of God’s standards. A word frequently used for it in the New Testament originally meant “missing the mark”. In archery terms, sin is any behaviour that fails to hit the bull’s-eye. In God’s version of an archery competition, simply getting your arrow to hit the target is no better than missing it altogether. Since He is a perfect God, nothing less than a bull’s-eye will do. He will not be pleased simply because there is a bit of good in us mixed in with the bad. A perfect God cannot even look on what is flawed.

Scared? If someone really is frightened of the consequences of sin, that’s surely a good thing. It will drive them to put their trust in the One who carried the sins of the world and is the bringer of forgiveness, the Lord Jesus Christ. When they do this, an amazing transformation occurs, even though they don’t suddenly become perfect and indeed never will in this life. Christians throughout the ages have viewed it like this: when we receive Christ as Lord and Saviour, God looks away from our blemishes and towards Him. He made on the cross a faultless self-offering to atone for our sin.

But to go into denial about the way sin clings to us is to court disaster. According to the Bible it turns us into self-deceived dupes who know nothing of God’s truth – even though we would pride ourselves on never telling lies. Worse still, it is effectively calling God a liar.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. 1 John 1:5-10 ESV

Agreed, making people feel guilty all the time is no help to anybody. Jesus certainly didn’t aim to do that. For most people, most of the time, He was a joy to be around. He was and is our Hope. But it would be infinitely dangerous to leave anyone thinking that sin is no worse than the world makes it out to be.

After all is said and done ... sin must be bad if it caused the Son of God to surrender His life!

Families

Reading the broad sweep of the Bible, you become aware that families are important to God – sacred, even. The apostle Paul speaks of bowing his knees before the Father, “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Ephesians 3:15). According to Acts 3:25 God’s covenant with the ancient patriarch Abraham included the clause, “And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed”. Much is made of the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ in His earthly life joined a human family, with parents, brothers and sisters. He had his few days of early independence as a 12-year-old boy when He went missing from the side of His parents on their return from Jerusalem. When they had gone back and collected Him, however, it is written that He “went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them” (Luke 2:50).

I grew up an only child. When I left home, living on my own became a way of life. My parents have since died. There are some good things about living with your own company, but you miss out in certain important ways. One of the joys of travelling round the country and accepting hospitality from friends is that I learn, albeit belatedly, how different families work.

At home I am used to having things as I like them to be. There is nobody else, humanly speaking, to please. I can eat the foods I like. (That was until the medical people took to lecturing me on having too many ready meals, so that I am now having to adjust my diet.) I can arrange my life in a thousand different ways, happily going on from day to day without giving much of a thought as to what could be done more pleasantly or more productively. I have my own way of organising my waking hours, having adjusted to early retirement for the time being. For me, this daily routine is or is becoming the norm.

But it is not uniform for every household. Each one is like a different country with its own culture and customs. As a lifelong learner I am ready to pick up new insights from my visits. In many homes, unlike mine, the main meal takes place in the evening. I mostly have mine in the middle of the day because that’s the way I was used to from childhood: my dad always came home from work, and I came home from school, and mum gave us our main meal. We then returned to work and school for the rest of the day. It became a habit that I have never thought of changing. But when in someone else’s house I cheerfully adapt myself to their meal pattern.

The television is another means whereby I learn to see life as other households see it. Left to my own devices I watch the programmes I like and regard as important. This mainly means the news and historical and other factual documentaries. It is an eye-opener to go to someone else’s home and watch them enjoy something I would never have considered viewing. One such example is the couple who like tuning in to Michael Portillo’s railway journeys. I used to notice this offering on the schedules without giving it a second glance! Now I have watched more of the series at home, with real pleasure and profit.

Christian believers are one great family under the fatherhood of God. They enjoy a marked family identity and share in the eternal benefits. Marvellously, this family identity is shared not only throughout the earth but also in heaven. Believers in the West have little concept of their invisible family; but how I look forward to joining them one day! What more I shall learn there, and what extra riches there are to be had, God only knows. All I know is that I shall be more than satisfied with God’s fatherly, family likeness.

Walking

Although I don’t often walk great distances, walking has been in my blood ever since childhood (rather like listening to the radio; maybe I’ll do a blog entry on that sometime). It sometimes astonishes me even now the distance I used to walk (or run) to get from home to primary school and back twice a day when I was little more than an infant. Many a time, on leisure days, I would wander off by myself, going all over Guernsey, my island home. It was quite safe and my parents had no fears for me.

Mum would take me walking quite often, especially on pleasant summer days. It was quite an achievement for her. Back in the 1940’s she had fallen victim to meningitis. The treatment in those days was as drastic as “kill or cure” and left her permanently deaf. As we tend to balance by using our hearing, Mum had to learn to walk all over again. She was a capable, even if a bit slow and unsteady, walker, with a very simple view of what made a good walk: you tried to return by a different way from your outward one. This has become a habit with me, too. Where possible I make my walks circular rather than retrace my steps. Like Mum I keep up a fairly slow pace – most people overtake me – and as with Mum my sense of balance is not great now.

Walking, they say, is good for you. In my view this isn’t uniformly the case. Sometimes my thoughts are positive, sometimes dark and brooding. But there is a sense of achievement, a sense of physical well-being and for me a sense of keeping in touch with my roots. Sometimes – as I have mentioned before on this blog – I am blessed by really uplifting God-incidences en route.

The Bible often describes the way of life of a man or woman as their “walk”. The first and maybe the most striking mention of this is in Genesis 5:21-24 -

When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. Genesis 5:21-24 ESV

To me this is a most beautiful picture of a man’s close friendship with the living God. Enoch didn’t just “walk before” God, conscious of having God close behind him as an observer and judge who would correct him if he stepped out of line. He didn’t just “walk after” God, taking God for a model and imitating His ways as far as man can imitate God. Enoch “walked with” God, a sign of confident (but in no way over-confident), close fellowship. Enoch made sure to live in such a way that he had no need to be scared of God or hide away. And this relationship took on a life of its own. Physical death made no difference to it. Once Enoch’s time on earth had passed, he was simply whisked away into the presence of God – to continue that walk on a higher plane.

He walks with God who speaks to God in prayer,

And daily brings to Him his daily care;

Possessing inward peace, he truly knows

A heart's refreshment and a soul's repose.

He walks with God who, as he onward moves,

Follows the footsteps of the Lord he loves,

And keeping Him forever in his view,

His Saviour sees and his example too.

He walks with God who turns his face to Heaven,

And keeps the blest commands by Jesus given;

His life upright, his end untroubled peace,

Whom God will crown when all his labours cease.

Dorothy Ann Thrupp, 1779-1847

Biblical Floods

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, visited a farm on the Somerset Levels to witness the appalling floods at first hand. “It’s a biblical scene,” he commented. “The scale of it here in Somerset is immense when you think of how many square miles are under water.”

“Biblical” in this context means enormous in size and scope. People may speak of a biblical scene when describing the aftermath of a massacre, or the widespread devastation that follows in the wake of a natural catastrophe.

It is intriguing for a Christian to hear the word “biblical” used in this way. After all, in today’s culture the Bible is rarely taken as a point of reference. Indeed the Bible Society conducted a survey recently which revealed widespread ignorance of what the Bible says about even basic subjects of religious knowledge.

Anyway, for Mr Cameron the floods presented a biblical scene to the eye. Doubtless he was thinking of the great Flood in the book of Genesis, the one where Noah fashioned his famous ark. Those who know the story will remember that he was delivered, along with seven of his relatives, and specimens of every creature liable to fall victim to flooding, from the total destruction of life on earth.

In recent centuries there has been a prevailing view that the story of Noah’s ark was just a pleasant fable. Even though I have a high view of the Bible, I was for many years under the influence of these ideas. Then as a young adult I was involved in correspondence with a keen creationist. He introduced me to “The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications”, a 1961 work by young earth creationists John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris. The “scientific implications” were that you could not take the biblical record seriously and accept an evolutionary point of view at the same time.

I must admit that I was rather doubtful about the book’s arguments at the time. Yet the biblical creationist movement has come a long way since then in its manner of presenting its case. Along with that development, there is now a wider understanding about how catastrophes on an enormous scale (a biblical scale, even!) have happened during the history of the earth, producing tremendous changes in a very short space of time.

But above all, using the word “biblical” to describe the Somerset Levels floods is testimony to the helplessness of man, for all his knowledge, in the face of the forces of nature and of God. In trying to play God, the human race may well have unleashed a power beyond its control. The late Baroness Thatcher, in an address to the Royal Society in 1988, expressed the concern that “we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself”.

Who knows where it will end? But for the one who trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ, the watchword is not to look downcast, but to look up!

"And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:25-28 ESV).

Character-building Patience – the sequel

Last time I mentioned that patience is a community thing. We have to be patient with circumstances. We may also have to be patient with others around us who are under the same pressures and perhaps not reacting so well as we are. Now our patience with others may have more benefits than just calming situations down. It may help remind someone of God’s wonderful patience with us. 

Has He not been patient? You and I owe our very existence to the patience of God. Without His millennia-long patience we would never even have come to birth! 

In 2 Peter 3 from verse 3 on we read that scoffers will come in the last days. “They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.’” Peter reminds them how the sudden coming of the Great Flood shows us how swiftly God can act when He chooses. He goes on, “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. … Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God? … [C]ount the patience of our Lord as salvation.” (ESV)

Each of us probably has a story of someone who blessed us by their patience towards us. In my case a memory strikes me from way back in 1967, and my unlikely benefactor was a gruff, ageing sergeant-major. I was a raw teenage cadet in the Combined Cadet Force, faced with passing my proficiency. Among other hoops I was required to jump through, I had to make the grade at target shooting. After a number of attempts with the .22 Lee Enfield rifle I had not yet reached the 60 marks needed. I approached our arthritic sergeant-major, seated at his desk at one corner of the safe end of the school rifle range, surrounded by a pile of cartridge boxes. 

“Please let me have another go, sir,” I begged. “That’s all very well, Demore, but these cartridges cost money – sixpence a time. We can’t be forever wasting them on you.” 

I must have looked pathetic and desperate enough to soften his resolve, however, and he gave me another chance. It paid off. On the crucial day I scored a creditable 71. In the end, though no soldier really, I achieved my proficiency. 

Without God’s incredible patience I would be a failure in far more important areas than not scoring enough bull’s-eyes on a rifle range. I would fail, for all eternity, to make it into heaven. That I can confidently “hope, by His good pleasure/safely to arrive at home” is down to at least two breathtaking facts: though I am essentially no different from the baying crowd who jeered as Jesus was crucified, He patiently endured a painful death to fulfil His Father’s salvation plan for the likes of me He puts up patiently with me though, day after day, my behaviour makes it look as though I’ve got nothing to be grateful to Him for. 

Put no strain on God’s patience. Your salvation depends on it. Instead, mirror it by being patient with someone else – it may depict God to them!

Character-building Patience

The findings of a 2006 survey of more than 1,000 adults revealed that most people take an average of 17 minutes to lose their patience while waiting in line. Also, most people lose their patience in only 9 minutes while on hold on the phone. I can certainly sympathise. More than once recently I have wrestled with complicated call centre options and given up in disgust.

The “patience” of an Old Testament character called Job was proverbial from early times (James 5:11). However, any serious reader of the Book of Job will soon discover that the hero was anything but patient in the modern sense of the word. He bewailed his wretched state and repeatedly took God to task for allowing it to happen. In other words, he was human. We can all identify with the strength of his feelings. Yet he is rightly credited with patience, but of a different order, as we shall see later.

James in his fifth chapter was addressing Christians suffering gross persecution. Faced with persistent discrimination and injustice, they were tempted to give up following Christ. After promising so much at the start, submitting to the gospel seemed to be leading them nowhere. How could James possibly comfort them and stiffen their resolve? He writes that those who persecute and exploit them will eventually come to rue the day. But how will they go on in the meantime?

“Be patient, therefore, brothers,” urges James, “until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand” (James 5:7-8 ESV).

“Be patient”? “Give up” would seem to be a more appropriate reaction. But what James advises is not passive fatalism, but an active, productive and wholesome endurance.

First, we are to be patient because there is a reward in view and personal development to be gained on the journey. We wait patiently, and that suggests waiting for something. That something is clearly the second coming in glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. But in waiting we also grow. The farmer works patiently for a harvest; with a harvest, he and his dependents can emerge from the winter fit and well. In the same way, the Christian uses his or her best endeavours in the midst of trials, aiming for a spiritual harvest of maturity and completeness.

Second, patience is rooted in dependable promise. The “early and late rains” are promised in the Bible and are a standard Old Testament image of God's promised faithfulness (Deuteronomy 11:13-14). In exactly the same way, God has given Christians a promise: Christ’s return. It isn’t just a pipe dream or a happy ending to a fairy tale; it’s a promise backed up by Christ’s resurrection, which has already happened. Isn’t that a spur to endurance?

Third, patience influences our behaviour patterns. We live and react differently when exercising patience. We’ll look at one practical outworking of this shortly. “Establish your hearts” is the watchword in verse 8. The heart is the seat of courage and resolve. Exercising Christian patience, we do the courageous and resolute thing rather than always cynically taking the line of least resistance.

Finally, the Lord’s coming is at hand. The way it is put in the original language, it’s as good as here already. The moral is: don't give up now!

James goes on to give one practical piece of advice and an example to encourage us. The practical advice is, “Do not grumble against one another”. This is profoundly wise. One danger with communities under stress is that individuals start turning on each other. This simply adds to the pressures. Patience is a community thing!

The examples to inspire us are the Old Testament prophets and ... Job. Job may have bemoaned his fate in plaintive terms, but he never short-circuited his misery by following his wife’s misguided advice to “Curse God and die”! As a result he became an inspiration, a byword for successful endurance.

A writer comments, “Suffering enters the believer’s life; perseverance is the believer’s response; blessing comes from the Lord, who is full of compassion and mercy. ... All of this demonstrates the character of the Lord, which is finally what James wants his readers to know with confidence.”

May God grant us this year a patience from God that just keeps us going confidently on our way, whatever happens!