Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna

Day 27 – Friday after 4th Sunday of Lent 

To Read:

The hoarding down the Broadway displayed in large red lettering:  ‘Do you want to be saved?  I wondered just how many people would say ‘Yes’ to that.  Had it read ‘Do you want to be safe?’ millions of people would have said, ‘Yes, Yes, Yes, we want to be safe’, and another barricade would have gone up.  The soul is imprisoned, protected, nothing can get in to hurt it, but then it can’t get out either.  Being ‘saved’ is nothing to do with being ‘safe’. Being ‘saved’  is seeing yourself clearly.  No ‘bitsa coloured glass’, no protection, no hiding, simply seeing yourself. 

Anna never said anything about being saved, never to my knowledge attempted to save anybody.  I don’t suppose she would have understood this way of putting things, for this was my interpretation.  But Anna knew full well that it was no use playing things safe, you simply had to ‘come outside’ if you wanted to make progress.  ‘Coming outside’ was dangerous, very dangerous, but it had to be done; there was no other way. 

‘Then you know Mister God in my middle in your middle, and everything you know, every person you know, you know in your middle.  Every person and everything that you know has got Mister God in their middle and so you have got their Mister God in your middle too – It’s easy.’

When Mr William of Occam said, ‘It is vain to do with more what can be done with less’, he had invented his famous razor, but it was Anna who sharpened it!

From the Scriptures:

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. ¹⁵ For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption.  When we cry, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,¹⁷ and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.      (Romans 8v14-17)

To Reflect:

Do I want to be safe or do I want to be saved?  I think I agree with Fynn and Anna.  When I am safe then I am the one in control.  I set the rules and the boundaries.  I decide what is good or bad for me, and will quickly go on to tell other people what is good or bad for them as well.  When I am safe it’s my world and I rule it.

But to be saved, to be rescued, is to recognise that there is, in Anna’s terms something missing in my middle.  And as I consider that I am immediately drawn back to Augustine of Hippo’s words;

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Augustine and Anna knew about the ‘God-shaped hole in the heart of everyone’ but Anna got there without first going around the houses as did Augustine and others.^[1]

When I am safe it is for me and me alone.  When I am saved I am drawn out of myself and placed in the middle of a greater love, even than the love I have for myself.  My selfish love (which is not the same as loving myself) is something I have spent far too much time polishing and even coveting and it has got me nowhere.

Of course being saved isn’t at all safe, not in selfish terms anyway.  If I allow myself to be saved, if I allow God to fill the gap in my middle, then it follows that God is in the middle of others as well.  If they know that we can rejoice together.  If they do not yet know that I cannot claim the privilege (or more correctly cannot choose the prejudice) of treating them any differently.  For, whether they know it or not, God is in the middle of everyone.

According to Anna we cannot ‘invite’ God into our hearts, that would be playing it safe and having God in our middle on our terms.  Mister God is already there saving us by calling us to open the door so that God’s presence can ’escape’ our small box and discover that the One Who Loves us Best is in the middle of everyone we meet.

This is risky living and why I often fail at the task.  It will mean rejection.  It will mean people think we are fools.  It will mean that people will take advantage of us.  It will mean that we will be laughed at and not taken seriously.  For a fuller list of reactions read 1 Corinthians 4v9-13.  (Please note that this rejection most often comes from other people of faith).

But all that is worth it to know that Mister God is in our middle and has sent us on a love quest to find the Mister God is also in the middle of everyone else.

 

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

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^[1] The full quote attributed to Augustine but made plain by Blaise Pascal is “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”  from his book ‘Pensées’ which in a sense, is his own version of Augustine’s ‘Confessions.’