Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna

Day 31 – Wednesday after 5th Sunday of Lent 

To Read:

When you’re little you ‘understand’ Mister God.  He sits up there on his throne, a golden one of course;  he has got whiskers and a crown and everyone is singing hymns like mad to him.  God is useful and usable.  You can ask him for things, he can strike your enemies deader than a doornail and he is pretty good at putting hexes on the bully next door, like warts and things.

Mister God is so ‘understandable’, so useful and so usable, he is like some object, perhaps the most important object of all, but nevertheless an object and absolutely understandable.  Later on you ‘understand’ him to be a bit different but you are still able to grasp what he is.  Even though you understand him, he doesn’t seem to understand you!  He doesn’t seem to understand that you simply must have a new bike, so your ‘understanding’ of him changes a bit more.  In whatever way or state you understand Mister God, so you diminish his size.  He becomes an understandable entity among other understandable entities.  So Mister God keeps on shedding bits all the way through your life until the time comes when you admit freely and honestly that you don’t understand Mister God at all.  At this point you have let Mister God be his proper size and wham, there he is laughing at you.

From the Scriptures:

The carpenter stretches a line, marks it out with a stylus, fashions it with planes, and marks it with a compass; he makes it in human form, with human beauty, to be set up in a shrine. ¹⁴ He cuts down cedars or chooses a holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. ¹⁵ Then it can be used as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it.     (Isaiah 44v13-15)

To Reflect:

James Fowler had not written his book Stages of Faith, (which mirrored Jean Piaget’s work on Social Development), when Anna was alive or even when Fynn wrote her words down but somehow Anna describes exactly how we grow in our relationship to Mister God.

Over the years God changes from being a heavenly One-armed Bandit who dispense goodies to a wrath-filled ally who punishes our adversaries and even may become someone who we can presume to understand.  (Not realising that everything we understand we can control and command).

Fowler suggests that as we get older we may be fortunate enough (he admits that this is not the case for everyone) to come to a place when:

‘…  you admit freely and honestly that you don’t understand Mister God at all.  At this point you have let Mister God be his proper size and wham, there he is laughing at you.’

Although, if we have any inkling of the One Who Loves us Best, I think we may find that God is laughing with us and calling us to go further on this journey of joy.

A little earlier on Day 11 of this journey through Lent we explored the way the names we use for God change.  It isn’t that God has changed one iota, but instead we have grown a little bit (or is that shrunk a little bit…?).  And having ‘grown’ we begin to understand that neither God nor ourselves fit in a box.  The only place we belong is in each other’s middle unperplexed by the questions of our girlhood – Fynn’s mum had a big hand in teaching this lesson – and content to not know all the answers.

Sometimes this has life-changing effects for ourselves and for others.  Belfast born missionary Amy Carmichael had brown eyes but she envied her mother’s blue ones.  Unlike Anna, asking for a new bike, Amy literally prays for God to make her Brown eyes blue.  And God says ‘no’.  Later on in her life it is only the fact that she has brown eyes, with her skin darkened by colouring, that allows her to rescue young Indian girls from prostitution… Occasionally God knows to not give us what we ask for.

And when those moments come around we must learn to ask God to help us shed some bitsabout our picture of God so that, knowing less we can see more.

To Do: 

1)  Find a quiet place to slowly read Amy Carmichael’s poem about ‘Blue Eyes’.  

2)  What parts of your picture of Mister God do you need to let go of?

 

Blue Eyes

Just a tiny little child. 
Three years old,

And a mother with a heart

All of gold.

Often did that mother say,

Jesus hears us when we pray,

For He’s never far away


And He always answers.

Now, that tiny little child

Had brown eyes,

And she wanted blue instead

Like blue skies.

For her mother’s eyes were blue

Like forget-me-nots. She knew

All her mother said was true,

Jesus always answered.

So she prayed for two blue eyes,

Said “Good night,”

Went to sleep in deep content

And delight.

Woke up early, climbed a chair

By a mirror. Where, O where

Could the blue eyes be? Not there;

Jesus hadn’t answered.

Hadn’t answered her at all;

Never more

Could she pray; her eyes were brown

As before.

Did a little soft wind blow?

Came a whisper soft and low,

‘Jesus answered. He said, No;

Isn’t No an answer?’                     (Amy Carmichael)

And here is another song just to enjoy.

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.