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It never ceases to surprise me in the run up to Christmas that people get so taken aback when things don’t quite work out the way they expected. Relationships sour. Travel plans get disrupted. Presents disappoint. It’s like the Christmas season should be exempt from the normal run of disasters, whether trivial or serious, that happen in life. That promised love, joy and peace should come to us, at least for the season, unconditionally guaranteed. Instead, Christians are bombed in Baghdad, travellers stranded in Gatwick, homes flooded in Kent. Life’s so unfair. Shouldn’t this be a time filled with magic and wonder?
Well - Wonder - yes. I’m not so sure about the Magic. At least, not the sort of conjuring act magic that promises you everything you ever wanted on a plate. But there is a very real wonder about Christmas, and it’s a wonder that can be found even when life throws up the most awful things. Because it’s nota sense of wonder based on a jolly Santa Claus idea, but on a powerful God-with-us reality that cannot be shaken by circumstances.
It’s a carol from a previous century that expresses it well - “How silently, how silently The wondrous gift is given!” It is in the quiet unspectacular corners of the human heart that God works His wonders, and leaves us amazed.
This past week, two dear friends passed away. They were keen supporters of our work, and they had also been close friends of my mother. It is strange to think that they may well all be sitting and drinking tea by some celestial meadow and reminiscing together.
Sometimes it seems to me, and the thought might seem somewhat obscene to our conventional understanding of old age, that things are not always as they seem. That period of growing incapacity, mental or physical (and sometimes both), that often precedes dying is a kind of preparation for the bliss of having it all removed. All of the decay, the weakness and disability. And to be brought in, whole and perfect, to the presence of the One, the One for whom your whole life has been but a preface. It's almost as if, having one’s faculties and capacities intact, becomes a hindrance to that process of spiritual preparation, and they need to be gently stripped away.
In our conventional understanding, death is seen as a winding down of affairs, rather than a building up and a preparation for a truer reality and way of being. Our efforts tend toward making the process as quick and painfree as possibility, and we question God when it becomes a prolonged season, wracked by pain and disability. Without a doubt, it's tough for those who love, those who care, and those who sit by bedsides with unanswered prayers. But for the individuals themselves, in my mothers case, for sure, and, I am persuaded also, in the lives of Margaret and of Betty, there’s a growing awareness that this is but a passage, and a preparation for something far greater.
For those who don't have this hope, no assurance of a life beyond, or of One who loves and is waiting to receive you in His arms, then it is nothing but a big obscene joke. One last bitter laugh of meaninglessness, when our small petty lives disappear down the drain. But for the one who has faith, it is a walking on toward the sunrise, like the sunrise over the Tejo this morning.
Last day of this amazing Canadian adventure, and we drove out to the Forks of the River Credit in Ontario, not that far from the city of Toronto to enjoy the autumn leaves in all their glory. Brilliant reds, oranges and yellows, and, with the whisk of a gentle breeze of this warm indian summer day, a whole shower of golden leaves falls like confetti.
Puts me in mind of a moment just about a year ago, when I was together with our Field Ministries Team for a retreat in the north eastern corner of Italy. Walking through trees to a lake, a sudden gust of, at that time, chilly autumnal wind, brought a similar shower of golden confetti around our heads. It was almost mystical. As we had been spending the afternoon in quiet contemplation and prayer concerning the future vision of our Mission, it seemed to me, as if God was giving a gentle confirmation of His continued presence going before us. And it wasn’t just me. When we got back to the Centre where we were staying, my Spanish colleague, Francie, said to me “Did you feel it, out there by the lake - the sense of his Spirit...?”
This Canadian adventure has been, yes, a holiday, but more than that. A refreshing, and a reawakening of the sense of God continually expressing Himself through what He has made, reinforcing what we understood of Him through His word, and what we recognised of Him in the lives of others. Whether it’s snow capped peaks, golden corn on the prairies, or red maple leaves dropping to the forest floor, this world is so full of His glory, it’s hard to miss.
Psalm 24:1 “The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein”
Rockies, Prairies, Badlands - all in one day. That was the drive back from Fairmont BC to Drumheller, Alberta. And along with the changing topography, fresh ideas about the God who created and shaped these changing landscapes. The road between Banff and Canmore ran by some knife edged ridges, violently thrust heavenward from the earth’s core, expressing the violence of God’s creative power, the Lord of Hosts, awesome in glory.
The highway then passes through foothills, and gradually the land around becomes prairie - great swathes of grassland with just a few ranches and oil wells dotted here and there, and the occasional combine harvester picking up the end of the season’s harvest. Suddenly the heavens are wide and empty with amazing arrangements of cloud stretching from horizon to horizon. Although it’s just sky and atmosphere, this heavenly canvas seems to possess a solidity that brings to mind the old fashioned word “firmament” - something firm and in place, while in a constant state of flux - a flowing palette of translucent blues, pinks and grays. This express the breadth of God in his Omnipresence, constantly there, constantly watching over that which He has made.
We skirt round the northern edge of Calgary and reach Drumheller just as the sun sets in a red blaze of colour. The road dips below the horizon into a deep valley of dry broken rocky slopes, each one exhibiting a whole history in sedimentary layers of shale and sandstone. This is the badlands - dinosaur country - the landscape carved out by a great ancient water system long since dried out to leave weird rock formations, called “hoodoos” and a rich treasure in the fossil remains of ancient creatures. Here, then, is the Ancient of Days, the Lord of time, who is from everlasting to everlasting. So a drive through Western Canada becomes an education in finding out God.
Well, I feel I did find God over this past week here in the Canadian Rockies. Yet in an elusive sort of way, a bit like the bears they kept warning us about at the resort. “There have been a few sightings this past week,” we were told. “They’re timid creatures, really, so make sure you make some noise, holler and clap when you’re walking the trails, so they keep away.” It added just a little bit of silent menace to those otherwise wonderful walks, But it wasn’t altogether unpleasant. It added to the richness of the experience, to have that dangerous strength somewhere lurking in the undergrowth. A bit like Mr Beaver’s description of Aslan, the lion, in the Narnia books. For me, the presence of God this past week felt like the presence of the bears, always there, just not visible. This was their territory. This was their land. We were their guests.
On the way back, driving to Lake Louise and Banff, we listened to a Tim Keller sermon on the jealousy of God - "I the Lord your God, am a jealous God" - and how that jealousy is manifested in what Keller called, God’s “angry love”. The phrase that immediately popped into my mind, I suppose because we were still driving through Bear Country, was “a bear robbed of her cubs”. That snarling blind fury of an animal when anything threatens its relationship with its children. And when anything happens to move us away from our relationship with God as our father, including what we ourselves do, with our laziness, our faithlessness, our waywardness, then we bear the full brunt of that fury of a Jealous God. But it’s a jealousy whose aim is ultimately not to destroy but to heal and put right that which is out of joint. The old prophet Hosea 13:18 describes it in his customary colourful language
“I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt...I cared for you in the desert, in the land of burning heat...But when I fed them, they became satisfied and proud.....Then they forgot me... So, I will come on them like a bear robbed of her cubs. I will attack them and rip them open....”.
James, in the New Testament, links this fiery jealousy to the reality of God’s grace which we receive in ever greater measure, and which works in us to heal the relationship, and thus avert the fury brought on by His jealousy.
http://sermons2.redeemer.com/sermons/jealousy-god
Hosea 13:4-8. James 4:1-6 “God’s spirit, which He caused to live in us, longs jealously for us. That’s why he gives us more grace...”
Still on about Joni Mitchell, and, on the same album “Blue” she sings “Turn this crazy bird around, I shouldn’t have got on this flight tonight.......”
Well, ours is a day flight, out over the North Atlantic, Greenland, Hudson Bay and the North West Passage -- fabled place names and memories from my boyhood readings of Jack London and John Buchan **. Well, Joni may have wanted to get off her plane and back to her lover, but we’re quite happy to be heading out to Canada!!
And it’s down into the flatlands of central Alberta, out of the airport, and on to a road so straight you hardly need to use the steering wheel. Just set it on cruise control and sit back and enjoy the ride. Trans Canada Highway, and up through Banff, and over the Continental ranges of the Canadian Rockies, and down into the valley of the Columbia river to Lake Columbia
What is it then about this Canadian vastness that lifts the soul, and that seems to reach right up into the heart of God? It’s something in the majesty of the peaks, the green pines carpeting the lower slopes, and just the sheer scale of the place. With distant thunderings providing the soundtrack. I think I want to find my God in this place over the next few days.
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Call_of_the_Wild and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_Heart_River
Sunday morning, (tomorrow!) we travel out to Calgary for yet another adventure. Two weeks in Canada, Alberta and Toronto. I shall have to dust off my Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young discs (or virtual discs as its all on mp3 now) so I can fill my head with lovely Canadian music on the way there. It all came about following a few conversations we had. First, together, just the two of us, when Anna asked me what would I really want to do to celebrate turning 60. I have always loved travelling, and central Canada is one of those far off places I’ve never been to. Then a conversation with our friends Rod and Donna Black, who live in Alberta, and it was sorted.
"On the back of a cartoon coaster
In the blue TV screen light
I drew a map of Canada
Oh Canada
With your face sketched on it twice"
Such poetry - Joni Mitchell, who, in a few spare words, can express both a deep longing for place and for person. Come to think of it, not unlike the spirit of fado music * that I’ve come to love here in Lisbon.
And then another amazing Canadian songwriter, Sara MacLachlan ** :
"Spend all your time waiting
For that second chance,
For a break that would make it okay.
There's always some reason
To feel not good enough,
And it's hard, at the end of the day....
...In the arms of the angel,
Fly away from here
From this dark, cold hotel room,
And the endlessness that you fear...."
Well, for us, it’s not exactly a dark, cold hotel room... but, we still need to get away. And, in our case, the Canadian angels God is sending are Rod and Donna, who have promised to whisk us straight off from arrival at Calgary airport up into the Rocky mountains.
Time to rest, reflect, think, pray, converse, listen, walk and talk, smile, laugh, and.... Bring it on, Rod!!
* “A Case of You” from Joni Mitchell “Blue” (1971) And for a genuine fado version of this song, you can’t get better than Ana Moura, complete with black shawl and Portuguese guitarra - www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiC_J8kCmzM
** “Angel” from Sara MacLachlan “Surfacing” (1997) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CbAjj80NIM
