Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna
Day 30 – Tuesday after 5th Sunday of Lent
To Read:
‘What’s all this got to do with Sunday School Teacher? She certainly knows about the difference.’
‘Oh yes’, nodded Anna.
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘When I find out things it makes the difference bigger and Mister God gets bigger.’
‘So?’
‘Sunday School Teacher makes the difference bigger but Mister God stays the same size. She’s frightened.’
‘Hey, hold on a tick. How come she makes the difference bigger and Mister God stays the same size?’
I nearly lost the answer; it was one of those real ‘give-away’ lines. Tossed off so quietly.
‘She just makes the people littler.’
Then she went on:
‘Why do we go to church, Fynn?’
‘To understand Mister God more.’
‘Less.’
‘Less what?’
‘To understand Mister God less.’
‘Wait a blessed minute. You’re flipped!’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘You most certainly are.’
‘No. You go to church to make Mister God really really big.
When you make Mister God really really really big, then you really really don’t understand Mister God – then you do.’
From the Scriptures:
God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.22 And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1v20-23)
To Reflect:
Sing with me:
My God is so big, so strong and so mighty
There’s nothing my God cannot do
My God is so big, so strong and so mighty
There’s nothing my God cannot do
The mountains are His
The rivers are His
The skies are His handy works too
My God is so big, so strong and so mighty
There’s nothing my God cannot do
If you like your All Age worship songs a little upbeat click here and dance along.
Anna puts the icing on the cake she is making for Sunday School Teacher. The problem with putting Mister God in a box, no matter how big the box and boxes don’t come much bigger than St Paul’s Cathedral that she liked to visit, is that if we are not careful we become ‘littler’. Or worse still ‘we make [other] people littler.’
Anna has pointed out one of the most ancient of heresies, one that pokes its head up in different forms every so often down the years, one beloved of those who want to separate the world into ‘Us’ and ‘Them’, into the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have Nots’ – Gnosticism.
Having many different forms and origins Gnosticism thrives on their adherents having some form of secret knowledge about God to which others are not privy. This leads to an exclusivism with the promise that those who follow their beliefs will discover how to ‘make Mister God really really really big’ when all that happens is that they become carbon copies of Sunday School teacher and ‘make the people littler.’
This doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination mean that ‘Our God isn’t a Great Big God’
This doesn’t mean that God’s love for us is not ‘Wide, wide as the Ocean’.
This definitely does not mean, as Anna proclaims, that as God gets bigger we get smaller.
It means that the more we learn that Mister God is bigger the more we grow a little ourselves and discover that the fullness of him who fills all in all fills us!
To be filled with the fullness of him who fills all in all is to be ‘en Christo’ – ‘in Christ’. Or to use Anna’s words to know that God is in our middle and our middle is in God. And of course the two will grow together. The only things that can stop that growth is to put Mister God in a box or ‘make other people littler.’ And when we do that it is we ourselves who find that, like the seed sown on rocky ground, our own faith shrivels and dies (Mark 4v17).
To Pray:
O living God,
reach through the violence of the proud
and the despair of the weak
to create in Jesus Christ
a people free to praise your holy name,
now and for ever.
(Prayer for Psalm 54 – Common Worship)
To Do:
1) Is there anyone in your worshipping community who feels ‘small’ in an unhelpful way. How can you help them see that Mister God is in their middle?
2) Does ‘Sunday School Teacher’ and her belittling ways take up any space in your heart. Find a way of proving that ‘she don’t teach you nuffink about Mister God.’ (One of the ways might be completing #1 above).
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.
Suffolk Vicar 