I was sitting with a prisoner last week considering, among other things, how we allow God to affect our behaviour. We were thinking together particularly around the concept of 'being transformed by the renewing of your minds' found in Romans 12. It got me to thinking about how much I allow God to renew my mind, and how my behaviour is affected. Isn't it funny how often in Chaplaincy God turns the tables upon you!
In Psalm 139 it is quite moving to see the tenderness that David uses in referring to God's continual presence even in the midst of suffering. The whole Psalm indicates an intimate relationship which David has with God, a relationship that is based on God's knowledge of 'the real David' and a relationship that is transformational. He writes boldly, "O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You discern my going outand my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways…Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?…If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night.' even the darkness is not dark to you."
One of the things that I love about the psalms is how realistic they are. David recognises that it is his Godward relationship that will get him through his anxieties, his cares, and even his failings (as he expresses in Psalm 51). Having written all of this, you would think that David would be a man without a care and without anxiety and yet in verse 23 he writes, "Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and see my anxious thoughts." It's comforting to know that even the author of Psalm 23 and Psalm 139 struggled with anxiety from time to time.
The lesson that I take away from verse 23, and from Romans 12 is that the key to transformation is not found in trying harder, it is not found in learning more skills, it is found in allowing ourselves to discover the will of God. And that can only be discovered through relationship. I know that every time I walk into a prison I try to remember to ask God in prayer 'what do you want me to do in here today'. Maybe I should be asking Him more regularly, 'show me where I will meet You in here today'. I would like to be brave enough to ask God more regularly to 'test me and know my anxious thoughts', maybe if I spent more time meeting with Him, and building up the sort of intimate relationship that The Son of David had I wouldn't be so worried, and I would be more changed.
Maybe giving up coffee in Lent will help!!!!
We are transmitters (of life)
I’m not usually much of a poetry buff, but this (edited) opening to a DH Lawrence poem struck me
As we live, we are transmitters of life.
And when we fail to transmit life, life fails to flow through us.
…
And if, as we work, we can transmit life into our work,
life, still more life, rushes into us to compensate, to be ready
and we ripple with life through the days.
In John 4 we read of Jesus talking to a woman by a well in Samaria. She has come, in the heat of the day, to draw water from the well. Hiding her secret, possibly in despair that life could ever be different she walks to the well. She has experienced many problems in her life, including several broken marriages, which have really hurt her. Jesus speaks to her in a kindly way, even though her first response to him is negative. He revels a real love for her and addressed her deepest needs … he meets her despair and hiddenness with hope and life.
Jesus knows that the water from the well could only satisfy the physical needs of the woman and her family for a short time but, using the image of water, he speaks of the deep and lasting satisfaction which comes from knowing him. He tells her that she has only to ask him and he would give her “living water”, the water of life. He goes on to say, “Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
How many prisoners or prison staff have we come across in the last few weeks who seem to exude despair or hiddenness, and how do we meet them? True, like Jesus we meet them wherever they are, but how do we meet them. Do we transmit life? Do we transmit hope?
DH Lawrence goes on
Even if it is a woman making an apple dumpling, or a man a stool,
if life goes into the pudding, good is the pudding,
good is the stool,
content is the woman, with fresh life rippling in to her,
content is the man.
Give, and it shall be given unto you
is still the truth about life.
But giving life is not so easy.
It doesn't mean handing it out to some mean fool, or letting the living dead eat you up.
It means kindling the life-quality where it was not,
even if it's only in the whiteness of a washed pocket-handkerchief.
Jesus said “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full” Jn 10:10