Time out

Do you ever get that feeling that you’re running on a treadmill and someone keeps increasing the speed and the gradient and you’re panicking and you can’t figure out how to slow down and if you stop you’ll fall and life will still race on around you…? 

Just keep running: life on a treadmill
(Image from www.idonedesign.com)

Life can get rather hectic sometimes, dashing from one activity to the next without a break, until suddenly you look up and realise four months have gone by and you’ve forgotten to do the cleaning and you haven’t seen that friend you promised you would… And you can’t remember the last time you paused for some reflection, prayer or to even open a Bible. 

But it’s ok. You can sort it all out. Next week. I mean, you’ve got at least three hours on Saturday after tennis and before dinner with the Joneses to do your laundry and phone your mum and read a Psalm. No problem. Except Saturday comes and you bump into someone on the way back from tennis and end up walking to town with them because you get chatting and you think you might as well go and pick up a few bits from the supermarket because you won’t have time next week anyway and there’s no milk in the fridge. So you end up slightly late for dinner but they don’t really mind and you can call your mum on the way back and do your washing overnight and pray while you’re drifting off to sleep. And then tomorrow you can try to find a time to meet up with that friend you still haven’t seen…

The life-treadmill can make you feel like you just need to keep running, because who knows what might go wrong when you take a break. But sometimes, it’s time to push the big red button, and just stop. Cancel the tennis. Leave the party early. Having plans to rest and to pray still counts as having plans – you’re busy, so you can say no when you need to. You might be the most efficient human ever (you’re probably not), but you can’t sort everything. You can’t. So just pause, and spend some time with the one who can.

Making sense of the mess

It can often be tricky to match up our view of God with our daily lived experience. We say God is all-powerful, and we say God is kind. So why is there so much mess? Why does God, who we say loves us and is totally in control, allow painful things to happen to us?

The Bible says this: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” (Romans 8:28-29, NIV)

Basically, through it all, God is making us more like Jesus. Theoretically, we may well believe this. Sometimes, we can even see this working itself out – that tricky relationship with a work colleague, whilst far from ideal, certainly builds our patience. But what about when we can’t see how on earth God could be using our messed-up circumstances to change us? Can he really be working for our good “in all things”? Frankly, in the midst of frustrating and painful situations, it can be difficult to make sense of it all. 

God: no more than The Ant Bully? (Warner Bros 2006)

But if mess is just mess, then we paint God to be no more than the proverbial mean kid with a magnifying glass, frying us like ants for his own amusement. If he is in control, he must be permitting the mess. And maybe he is changing us, by asking us to persevere despite what we can see, by teaching us to trust in his timing and not our own, by making us 100% dependent. 

Sometimes the mess can stop us seeing the bigger picture, but we can only hold on to his promise – he has a perfect plan, and he’s working in it for our good.

Bad stair day

Different parts of the Bible can speak to us more clearly on some days than others. Today, one of those days when it’s hard to climb the stairs, physically and mentally, I am particularly excited about Revelation 21.

“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21 verses 3-4)

Even if you feel fine now, this is a great promise – it’s not just a healthy, happy life (although that will be a wonderful thing). It’s God, the actual creator, sustainer, redeemer God, living with his people face to face.

From the sidelines

There’s a sequence in the film Valentine’s Day where Reed, having been left by his girlfriend, discovers none of his friends thought they were a good match in the first place. Enraged, he says to his best friend, “Apparently everyone and their mother felt that way but nobody had the guts to tell me!”

Reed and his best friend Julia in Valentine’s Day
(Photo by Ron Batzdorff © MMIX New Line Productions, Inc.)

There are certain people in life I like to think of as being like soap opera viewers: they know all of the characters, but they’re not involved in the plot. These people vary depending on the situation, but they are the ones we can turn to when others are too involved to see it objectively.

Several such friends gave me the same advice about a certain situation recently, advice I was reluctant to take. It seemed easy for them to offer it, for the same reason that they were the first ones to see it – they were not involved in the plot. But when I eventually saw that they were right, I realised that other more plot-involved friends agreed with them. My reaction was similar to Reed’s: why did nobody ever tell me?

So I suppose the moral of the story is this: if you’re the soap-watcher on a friend’s life and you find yourself shouting warnings at the screen, do them a favour and gently tell them. They probably need to hear it, even if they may not be able to see it yet.

Bargain hunter

“If others don’t love me, I would rather die than live […]. [T]o gain some real affection from you, […] or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest.” – Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

People sometimes say, when faced with the prospect (real or imagined) of a not-so-good situation, “I would rather die”. We know death is usually not an option, and that the proposed deal is meaningless, yet we continue to make this kind of deal, regardless of its power.

I frequently attempt this myself, especially when it comes to dealing with pain or discomfort. I struggle periodically with anxiety issues. Thankfully, the effect this has on my day-to-day life now is small, but there have been times when I have tried to make deals to get rid of it.

A common “bargain” I used to propose when the anxiety seemed too much went something like this (for context, I also battle on-and-off with runner’s knee): I would rather have pain in my knees every day for the rest of my life – but please take away the fear.

(I’ve always been a deal-maker – apparently, by the age of two, I was bargaining with my mum about bedtime, and suggesting what she would have to do to make me agree to go to bed.)

But physical pain (to me, anyway) seems much easier to handle than emotional or mental pressure. Perhaps the more tangible nature of the pain makes it easier to manage. There’s a physical problem with a physical solution – be it a hot water bottle, painkillers or physiotherapy. But a problem that you can’t point to and say “that’s where it hurts” seems much more difficult to approach.

Who was I bargaining with, anyway? God? I’m pretty sure that’s not the way he works – he wouldn’t need to make a deal with us, to exchange one kind of pain for another. In fact, he’s made a deal to exchange all that’s bad for all that’s perfect. He’s already offered the ultimate exchange in Jesus – the only one we’ll ever truly need.

Let go

I can be quite an anxious person, a quiet in-the-corner worrier trying to see the bright side. I have lost count of the number of times this verse has been given to me (thanks, if one of those times it was you): “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

 

You might think that’s easy to say – but I find this verse very reassuring, because this isn’t twee advice, this is God. This is God telling us through Paul that we do not actually need to be anxious. At all. Things trouble us, but we don’t need to drown in them.

 

We had a helpful discussion in our Bible study group last week, based on this verse, about letting go of anxieties and burdens. Somebody famous apparently once said, in response to a concern about constant prayer seeming to make no difference, ‘Stop praying’. Not because we shouldn’t take the things that trouble us to our heavenly father – of course we should – but sometimes we can think we are letting go in prayer and all we are doing is reminding ourselves of the problem and going over and over it in our minds. We can get stuck in a loop of telling God all about this situation we’ve been in for months and analysing how and why it is the way it is – but without actually giving it over to him. One member compared it to the classic “Don’t think of an orange”. (Are you now thinking of an orange?)

 

Don’t think of an orange. Especially not this one.

 

Prayer isn’t magic – we won’t necessarily feel any different, and the problem itself may not disappear. But if we believe God is capable, kind, loving and fair, then part of praying about these things should be letting go of them. We are dependent on God, and that’s the point. 

A leap of faith

Before Christmas, a friend challenged me to do something I “wouldn’t usually do”. So this week, I agreed to go climbing (this is where we went). It was much chalkier than I expected, but the crash mats at the foot of the walls were reassuringly bouncy.



The Depot: Nottingham

 
From the off, I banned the word fail (it’s not too confidence-building), and we opted instead for “deferred success”. A very appropriate term for an activity like this, where quite frequently at first you don’t succeed. But you try, and try again.
 
The moment of deferred success that has most stuck with me was my second attempt at a particular course I hadn’t managed first time around. There was a point where I knew in theory what had to come next, but just didn’t believe I could do it. I was about ready to give up, when I heard the words “I have faith in you”.
 
What was intended as an encouragement served instead as both a guilt-trip and a challenge for my pride. Still not brimful of confidence, I just had to take a leap of faith – and it worked. I reached the top and felt I had indeed done something I wouldn’t normally have done.
 
How often is this true of all us, in all sorts of things! To get any further up the metaphorical (or in this case, physical) wall, we sometimes have to let go and remove our feet from their safety ledge. We won’t necessarily succeed the first time, and we might not even enjoy the process. But true deferred success and a sense of retrospective fun can make it all worth it.