Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna
Day 34 – Saturday after 5th Sunday of Lent
To Read:
‘Tich,’ I said, what were you asking God about real questions for?
‘Oh, it’s just sad, that’s all.’
‘What’s sad?’
‘People is.’
‘I see. What’s sad about people?’
‘People ought to get more wise when they grow older. Bossy and Patch do,
but people don’t.’
‘Don’t you think so?’ I asked.
‘No. People’s boxes get littler and littler.’
‘Boxes? I don’t understand that.’
‘Questions are in boxes’, she explained, ‘and the answers they get only fit the size of the box.’
‘That’s difficult; go on a bit.’
‘It’s hard to say. It’s like – it’s like the answers are the same size as the box. It’s like them dimensions.’
‘Oh?’
‘If you ask a question in two dimensions, then the answer is in two dimensions too. It’s like a box. You can’t get out.’
‘I think I see what you mean.’
‘The questions get to the edge and then stop. It’s like a prison.’
‘I expect we’re all in some sort of prison.’
She shook her head. ‘No, Mister God wouldn’t do that.’
‘I suppose not. What’s the answer then?’
‘Let Mister God be. He lets us be.’
‘Don’t we?’
‘No. We put Mister God into little boxes.’
‘Surely we don’t do that?’
‘Yes, all the time. Because we don’t really love him. We got to let Mister God be free. That’s what love is.’
From the Scriptures:
For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. 27 Unlike the other[f] high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself. 28 For the law appoints as high priests humans, who are subject to weakness, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever. (Hebrews 7v26-28)
To Reflect:
‘If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t they never were’. So wrote Richard Bach in the book Jonathan Livingstone Seagull (a book loitering at the back of my mind for future Lent Reflections…)
Again and again Anna reminds us of the peril of putting God in a box. Once we have trapped Mister God there we find that we have made a prison for ourselves also. We may think we are in charge and have everything sorted and under control but Bossy the stray cat has got more wisdom than us.
If we do not learn to let God be God. To free Mister God to be as big or small or with however many points of view that are needed, we will never be free ourselves.
When we let Mister God be, we become.
And that is surely the whole point of the journey? A homeless waif from the East End of London teaches us that we can only finally find a home when we stop looking for a place and start finding a relationship.
When we make ‘place’ and ‘dogma’ too important we are the saddest of people because in restricting how the One Who Loves us Best loves us we make it less possible for us to receive that same love.
‘If you love someone, set them free’ is about more than our care for the growth of others, be they God or not. If we don’t set others free we will never find freedom ourselves. All that happens is our boxes for God and everything just gets littler and littler. That should be enough to make anyone weep.
To Pray:
Lord God, judge of all,
before whom no secrets are hidden,
let your justice shine out
and your righteousness sweep wickedness from its throne,
that we may live free from fear and stumbling;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
(Prayer for Psalm 94 – Common Worship)
To Do:
1) Set something free. Let a birds feather be caught in the wind, a leaf flow down a stream, give away an unused but ‘too precious’ possession.
2) How are you holding Mister God down in your life? Is there anything you can let go of to help show that you love God more?
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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.
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