Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna

Day 24 – Tuesday after 4th Sunday of Lent

To Read:

She didn’t need to think about the answer to my question ‘How come you haven’t got bits of glass?’  She’d had it ready for a long time, simply waiting for the right moment to deliver it. She didn’t make a fuss about delivering it either:  ‘Oh, ‘cos I ain’t frightened.’  Now, that’s probably the most missable sentence that can be uttered.  Missable because that’s what it’s all about.  Missable because it is too damned expensive.  Missable because the price of not being frightened is trust.  And what a word that is!  Define it how you like, and I’ll bet you’ll miss the main point!  It’s more than confidence, more than security;  it doesn’t belong to ignorance or, for that matter, to knowledge either.  It is simply the ability to move out of the ‘I’m the centre of all things’ and to let something or someone take over.  And as for Anna, she had simply moved out and let Mister God move in.  I’d known about this for a long time.

    

To Reflect:

When we lived in the wonderfully named Parish of Belgravia now, as with many urban centres, part of the decaying heart of Johannesburg our home was a lovely, corrugated iron roofed bungalow overshadowed by an enormous Jacaranda tree (very similar to the house and tree pictured here).  With three young boys aged 7, 5 and 3 the Jacaranda became a magnet to swing from and climb up.  Most days it was fine until one day our eldest boy decided to climb higher than usual.

A few days later the doorbell rang and we found one of our regular wayfarers, who had come to collect some food, holding a crying and very sore Tim in his arms.   Then followed a good few days in hospital to treat a damaged liver and a torn kidney and he was as right as rain.  We don’t think he has learnt any lessons from the experience having recently completed a solo cycle ride around the British coast for a homeless charity – sleeping rough almost all the way around himself – all the time singing karaoke!

Oh, and he also has a penchant for throwing himself off very tall mountains in Europe with a hang glider strapped to his back!  I’m not sure if has read Anna’s story but I think I know what present we will be getting him for his next birthday…

The problem of bits of glass according to Anna, especially when they are not bits of glass of your own choosing, is not so much that they don’t show you things but that they stop you from seeing other things.  How many of us grew up with, and perhaps still suffer under, a picture of God as an angry old man with a fistful of lightning bolts who is out to get you?   And if we have such a bit of glass stuck deep at the heart of our faith it is very difficult to imagine anything different.

How do we leave behind these bits of glass that were never ours in the first place and move on to the freedom from fear promised us?  For, as our Scripture reading reminds us, the supreme task of Mister God’s Boy is to  ‘free us who all our lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.’

When we put God in a box.  When we allow others to put God into a box we are doing Old Nick’s work for him as we bring in fear where we are promised freedom.

We must remind ourselves always that the love shown to us in creation, poured out for us on the cross, and empowering us with the grace of the Holy Spirit day by day has one task, to make us fearless.  

For there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; (1 John 4v18)

 

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.