Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna

Day 13 – Wednesday after 2nd Sunday of Lent 

To Read:

[Continued form Day 12]

….I could see that this was going to be one of those times, but thank goodness she didn’t expect an answer to her question for she hurried on:  ‘Them pollywogs, I could love them till I bust, but they wouldn’t know, would they?  I’m million times bigger than they are and Mister God is million times bigger than me, so how do I know what Mister God does?’

‘Fynn, Mister God doesn’t love us.’  She hesitated.  ‘He doesn’t really, you know, only people can love.  I love Bossy, but Bossy don’t love me.  I love the pollywogs, but they don’t love me.  I love you, Fynn, and you love me, don’t you?’  I tightened my arm about her.  ‘You love me because you are people.  I love Mister God truly, but he don’t love me.’

It sounded to me like a death-knell.  ‘Damn and blast’, I thought.  ‘Why does this have to happen to people?  Now she’s lost everything.’  But I was wrong. She had got both feet planted firmly on the next stepping-stone.

‘No,’ she went on, ‘no, he don’t love me, not like you do, it’s different, it’s millions of times bigger.’

I must have made some movement or noise for she levered herself upright and sat on her haunches and giggled.  Then she launched herself at me and undid my little pang of hurt, cut out the useless spark of jealousy with the delicate sureness of a surgeon.

‘Fynn, you can love better than any people that ever was, and so can I, can’t I?  But Mister God is different.  You see, Fynn, people can only love outside and can only kiss outside, but Mister God can love you right inside, and Mister God can kiss you right inside, so it’s different.  Mister God ain’t like us;  we are a little bit like Mister God, but not much, yet.’

From the Scriptures:

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ² “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” ³ So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. ⁴ But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.  (Jeremiah 18v1-4)

To Reflect:

Somewhere deep in the bowels of Terminal Three at Heathrow Airport there may be hidden away a very very old box of Chocolate Wagon Wheels.  Thirty years ago my mother, returning to South Africa after a time with family in the United Kingdom, had decided that instead of bringing her grandsons the usual trinket souvenirs she would give them something British that they could really get their teeth into.  Hence the box of very large chocolate covered, jam and marshmallow filled, biscuits.  However even in those days plane operators limited the amount of carry-on luggage that was permitted and she was told either to pay extra and send them by freight or leave them behind.  Our family really hopes that assorted baggage handlers and boarding pass giver-outers had a feast with them instead of letting them go mouldy…

The problem with Wagon Wheels, as any British child of my generation will tell  you, is that they are not as big as they used to be (proven by the picture accompanying these words).  But sadly that is not the only problem.  As with many things that, when children, we used to struggle to fit in a chubby little hand or cram into a mouth full of milk teeth, it’s not just the Wagon Wheels that have gotten smaller we have gotten bigger!  And as we have grown we find that everything is smaller and what used to excite our taste buds with the prospect of trying to cram all that yummy sweetness into our mouths in one go now brings only sadness and much muttering about shrinkflation.

Anna’s gift was that she had not grown up.  Because she was small she could see how big things were.  So big that you couldn’t see all of everything.  So big that you couldn’t explain all of it.  So big that you knew that the usual rules didn’t, even couldn’t, apply.

Anna had worked out that if she could love tiny little pollywogs, and they didn’t know how or why she loved them, so she knew that Mister God loved her even if she didn’t know exactly how or why she was loved by Mister God.

She had learnt the lesson of the clay in the hands of the potter.  Though born out of the mind and care of the potter, reflecting the image of the potter, all the clay knows about the potter is the caress of the Creator’s fingertips.  And, sure and safe in that knowledge the clay is ready to be placed into the furnace of life so that the glory of the Creator might be made manifest.

To Pray: 

To Do: 

1)  Even if denying them is one of your Lenten disciplines (or perhaps especially so if that is the case), seek out and savour the taste of a favourite childhood sweet.

2)  That really big question that has been weighing your faith down, you know the one I’m writing about, give it to God.  You and I are too small to carry them for one moment longer and all they are doing is getting in the way of Mister God loving us ‘right inside.’

Please Note:  These reflections are also published on my blog: suffolkvicarhomes.com on Bluesky as @suffolkvicar.bsky.social, and on my public Facebook page  Suffolk Vicar – Rev Andrew Dotchin.  If you would like them as a daily email please send a request to revdotchin@gmail.com

If you have enjoyed reading them please make a donation to The Clergy Support Trust who provided a  generous grant to help me find the space to compose them.

Acknowledgements:

Quotes from the book ‘Mister God, This is Anna’ are Copyright © Fynn 1975

Illustrations from the book ‘Mister God, This is Anna’ and ‘Anna and the Black Knight’ are Copyright © Pappas 1975

Psalm Prayers from Common Worship: Daily Prayer, material from which is included here, is copyright © The Archbishops’ Council 2005 and published by Church House Publishing

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition.  Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

These Reflections, ‘Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna’ are copyright © Andrew Dotchin 2025 and may be reproduced without charge on condition that the source is acknowledged.