What it Means to be Held

Another day, another premmy!! Yesterday we visited a tiny two week old baby, son of good friends here, who, according to the laws of pregnancy ought still to be safely tucked away back in that comfortable all embracing womb for anther two weeks before emerging into the light of day. But here he is, and his puckered up face expresses his distaste for having to breathe air so early and to cope with all these strange new realities around him.

And as Joana carries him off to be changed, screams of indignation filled the air to be placed on a changing mat and no longer held, even for a moment. All he wanted was to be held. The enduring picture in my mind is of the little one content and secure in his mother’s embrace. Sometimes all we want is to be held as well. News this morning is about possible panic surrounding the spread of swine flu, and about the rise of child poverty in Germany, Europe’s richest nation. We might be advanced, we might be prosperous, we might be comfortable in our lives, but there’ still a lot out there to make us anxious and afraid. We still need to be held.


Puts me in mind of Natalie Grants beautiful song “Held”. Written by American singer/songwriter Christa Wells, against the background of three of her friends who had had to cope with tragic loss, the first verse being inspired by one young mother’s loss of her baby after only two months

Two months is too little
They let him go
They had no sudden healing
To think that providence
Would take a child from his mother
While she prays, is appalling

Who told us we'd be rescued
What has changed and
Why should we be saved from nightmares
We're asking why this happens to us
Who have died to live, it's unfair.

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We'd be held

You should listen to it. More than that, you should immerse yourself in the words of Jesus who promises us, not that we won’t ever suffer loss, nor that the sacred thing we hold most dear, will not be torn from our lives in some tragic moment, but that He will remain constant with us through everything we face, and will hold us in the palm of His hand. And reflect on your condition with the words of the ancient Psalm…

“….But I have stilled and quieted my soul.
Like a weaned child with his mother
Like a weaned child is my soul within me.
Put your hope in the Lord.
Both now and for evermore.

Psalm 131

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-hJ87ApWtw&feature=related

http://www.christawells.net/what-it-means-to-be-held.html