Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna – Day 16

Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna

Day 16 – Saturday after 2nd Sunday of Lent

To Read:

‘There’s another way that Mister God is different.’ We obviously hadn’t finished yet. ‘Mister God can know things and people from the inside too. We only know them from the outside, don’t we? So you see, Fynn, people can’t talk about Mister God from the outside; you can only talk about Mister God from the inside of him.’

Another fifteen minutes or so were spent in polishing up these arguments and then, with an ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she kissed me and tucked herself under my arm, ready for sleep.

… You could, if you wished, deny that Mister God existed, but then any denial didn’t alter the fact that Mister God was. No, Mister God was, he was the king-pin, the centre, the very heart of things, and this is where it got funny. You see, we had to recognize that he was all these things and that meant that we were at our own centre, not God. God is our centre and yet it is we who acknowledge that he is the centre. That makes us somehow internal to Mister God. This is the curious nature of Mister God, that even while he is at the centre of all things he waits outside us and knocks to come in. It is we who open the door.

Mister God doesn’t break it down and come in, no, he knocks and waits.

Now it takes a real super kind of God to work that one out, but that’s just what he’s done. As Anna said, ‘That’s very funny, that is. It makes me very important, don’t it? Fancy Mister God taking second place!’ Anna never got involved in the problem of ‘free will’. I suppose she was too young, but she had got to the heart of the matter: Mister God took second place, ain’t that something!

From the Scriptures:

Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you, and you with me. (Revelation 3v20)

To Reflect:

Enter Stage Left: A somewhat famous painting of The Light of the World by William Holman Hunt. Subject of many sermons with reminders of details from the painting, the door has no handle on the outside, it is overgrown so has not been opened for a long time, the painting has brought a challenge to many a person to open the door of their heart to let the Light of Christ in.

The original of the painting became such a popular attraction and object of devotion that Keble College, where the painting was kept, started charging an entrance fee to those wishing to see it. This infuriated Holman Hunt so much that he went on to paint two bigger reproductions so that people could see it for free. Sometimes I wonder if Holman Hunt and Anna were friends…..

Although Anna’s words today end up with ‘Mister God’ courteously standing outside of us, she begins by telling us where she knows Mister God has always been, in her middle.

The fact that Mister God knows us from our inside is one of the reasons why Mister God’s love is different.

The fact that Mister God also stands outside our middle and waits for us to open up our inside shows even more how different and bigger the love the Mister God has for us is.

Mister God’s love is patient and kind and loving…. Anyone else feel a few famous verses of Scripture coming along?

Bishop Flora Winfield has described this gentle caring different love that Anna sees in Mister God in terms of a banquet.

Every table is a table where Christ is present, as host and guest and feast

At every table Christ is present in our middle as host, outside of us knocking on the door of our lives as guest, and offering His very self for love of us by becoming the feast itself.

As Anna would say, ‘Isn’t it lovely?’

To Pray:

Give to us, Lord Christ,

the fullness of grace,

your presence and your very self,

for you are our portion and our delight,

now and for ever.

(Prayer for Psalm 16 – Common Worship)

To Do:

1) Prayerfully read the poem ‘Love Bade me Welcome’ by George Herbert (included below).

2) When the Holy Spirit comes knocking on the door of your heart what stops you from running to open the door to let Her in?.

Talk to God about what holds you back from sitting down to the feast that Love has prepared and won for 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:

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.

Love Bade me Welcome

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,

guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

from my first entrance in,

drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

if I lacked anything.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:

Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,

I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

Who made the eyes but I?

Truth, Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?

My dear, then I will serve.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:

So I did sit and eat. (George Herbert)

Suffolk Vicar

musings and meditations from a priest on the Suffolk Coast

Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna – Day 16