Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna

Day 15 – Friday after 2nd Sunday of Lent

To Read:

The first salvo was enough for me;  it all needed a bit of thinking about, but I wasn’t going to be spared the rest of her artillery.

‘Fynn, why do people have fights and wars and things?’  I explained to the best of my ability.

‘Fynn, what is the word for when you see it in a different way?’  After a minute or two scrabbling about, the precise phrase she wanted was dredged out of me, the phrase ‘point of view’.

‘Fynn, that’s the difference.  You see, everybody has got a point of view, but Mister God hasn’t.  Mister God has only points to view.’

At this moment my one desire was to get up and go for a long, long walk.  What was this child up to?  What had she done?  In the first place, God could finish things off, I couldn’t.  I’ll accept that, but what did it mean?  It seemed to me that she had taken the whole idea of God outside the limitation of time and placed him firmly in the realm of eternity.

What about this difference between ‘a point of view’ and ‘points to view’?  This stumped me, but a little further questioning cleared up the mystery.  ‘Points to view’ was a clumsy term.  She meant ‘viewing points’.  

The second salvo had been fired.

Humanity in general had an infinite number of points of view, whereas Mister God had an infinite number of viewing points.

When I put it to her this way and asked her if that was what she meant, she nodded her agreement and then waited to see if I enjoyed the taste.  Let me see now.  Humanity has an infinite number of points of view.  God has an infinite number of viewing points.  That means that – God is everywhere. I jumped.  Anna burst into peals of laughter.  ‘You see,’ she said, ‘you see?’

I did too.

To Reflect:

Many British people will be familiar with the long running BBC TV programme Points of View.  First aired in 1961 and still broadcast, the originally weekly (now seasonal) programme aired the opinions of viewers on programmes shown on the BBC and, at its best was able to balance brickbats with bouquets and help to show a nation that we sometimes have to agree to disagree.

In an era when Auntie and the denizens of Broadcasting House was almost always right (or at least they thought they were) it was a new and helpful way for the BBC to check that I had in fact seen all ‘Points of View’.  Sadly today’s versions of such programmes just tend to be a cacophony of extreme views being shouted at each other in the name of entertainment rather than information and elucidation of truth.  Mind you even Pontius Pilate had a problem working out what that was…..  (John 18v33-38)

God, with Anna’s ‘points to view’ sees all the corners and peoples of the world and loves every one of them with their various ‘Points of Views’, even if they are not lovely to each other.

Psalm 139 says it all.  There is nowhere where God is not.  Or to use Fynn’s  words with Anna:

Humanity has an infinite number of points of view.  God has an infinite number of viewing points.  That means that – God is everywhere.

When I was a young Christian I did not like Psalm 139 at all.  For me, taught from an early age that God was a bit like Zeuss on Mt Olympus, an angry old man armed with lightning bolts who was ‘out to get me’, I was petrified.  If God found out that I hadn’t done everything right, hadn’t got all my Points of View and actions lined up in Gospel order perfectly ready for my entry into Paradise, then I would be condemned for getting it wrong.  And, as a teenage boy in a boarding school with 699 other teenage boys, the opportunities for getting it wrong were endless!

Wonderfully God has shown me that just because I stand in different and sometimes in the wrong places, God still smiles on me and loves me.  Yes, God is still everywhere I go, but no longer is God ‘out to get me’.  Rather God is ever present to remind me to look to God’s love; especially when my Points of View lead me to be particularly unloving.

This verse of the Sunday School chorus says it all and I will never tire of singing it:

And when, if we could but begin to learn this, it would finally bring an end to people hav[ing] fights and wars and things.

To Do: 

1)  If you can, watch a TV programme such as Question Time and try to understand the points of view of those with whom you disagree, and then pray for them.

2)  Think of a time when you felt left alone by, or even hunted down by, God.  If it will not hurt too much try to spend time talking to God about what was happening in your life then.  Ask God to help you be aware that there is nowhere you can go, or situation in which you can be, where God has not already arrived ahead of you.

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.