Aldates No. 9 - Hope in the waiting

I don’t know about you, but when I think about waiting at the moment my mind straight away heads right towards a topic we’ve become all too familiar with over the past 18 months. The Coronavirus pandemic has for many of us shown us just how fragile the world we build for ourselves truly is. Our supposedly well laid plans becoming little more than a distant memory in the face of such crushing darkness. In the words of Margo Roth Spiegelman “From here you can tell just how fake it all is. It’s not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It’s a paper town... Paper people in paper houses living paper lives, burning the future to stay warm.” 

Of course this quote is really more about how society as a whole has become little more than a slave to keeping itself going, a fact which has been exposed in excruciating detail by the pandemic and lockdown, but I think that there is a real wisdom in those words. It is a pretty widely accepted truth that this world and everything in it will not be around forever. Science today has all sorts of theories as to how the world as we know it might end, from climate change, to asteroid impact, to the sun expanding, all the way to the inevitable heat death of the universe, and even ignoring all that, we all at some point will have to come to terms with the fact that our life on this green planet is but a fleeting moment when compared to the sheer scale of the cosmos.

In Mark 13:2 Jesus himself says of our great buildings that “not one stone here will be left on another.” In Matthew 6:19-21 he tells us not to store up for ourselves treasures on earth, as they are temporary and will be destroyed. In other words, when we rely simply on our own strength or abilities or knowledge to make our way in life, we are ultimately destined to fail.

Covid-19 has produced a catastrophe the likes of which few of us have ever seen or ever likely will see again in our lifetimes, and has seriously shaken up what we thought we knew about how we as a people connect with one another, but if there is one positive thing which has come out of this time, it is that in many ways, it has forced us to take a step back from the chaos of modern life and refocus on the things that really matter: Our friends, our families, and perhaps most importantly, our faith. In a world where everything we’ve ever known is breaking we have a simple choice: Hold onto God and His promises and ride the wave, or break with it.

Periods of transition are often painful, and nowhere in my life has this been more apparent than at the end of my time in Cardiff. I won’t go into too much detail right now, as we would likely be here all day, but in short, of the three years I was there, the second was a complete disaster, and the repeat year I had to take as a result was really no better. Just when I finally felt like I might be on top of things and have a chance to get somewhere, a combination of a pretty nasty stomach bug and a particularly intense weekend doing puppetry knocked me completely out of action for two weeks, and just like that, that which had come together commenced to fall apart.

I started falling further and further behind academically and for reasons I won’t go into became pretty disillusioned with the church I had been attending at university. To make matters worse, around the same time my relationship of nearly a year and a half collapsed and I fell into a pretty dark downward spiral of loneliness and depression.

Despite all this though, I can genuinely say that it was in these moments, when it seemed like all hope was lost, that I felt God moving most powerfully in my life. It was through leading a hall group in my repeat year in Cardiff that I met some of my closest friends from that time - a few of whom I’m still in contact with – who came alongside me when it just seemed like everything was destined to crash and burn. It sounds like such a small thing but it was this little reminder, this hope, the hope of an as yet unseen, distant light at the end of the tunnel that kept me going in the waiting. The knowledge that this was not the end, that something far greater awaited on the other side, even if in the moment such a hope seemed impossible. 

As you can hopefully tell, that story does ultimately have a happy ending, as it kick started a chain of events that led to my writing this today, but at the end of the day I am not doing this for my sake, or to elevate myself, but because I genuinely believe that God has a plan for us that is bigger and better than anything we can possibly know or imagine. We need not fear suffering, or hardship, or even death, because through Jesus we are to be set free from those things by the power of the Holy Spirit, as adopted sons and daughters of the living God. We need never be hopeless because with Jesus we can never be irreparably broken. As Paul writes in verse 24: It is in this hope we were saved. More than that though, he also writes that hope that is seen is no hope at all. We do not just hope for things that we already have, but more than that we hope for things yet to come, for newness of life in the new creation, and that, in my opinion, is a hope worth waiting for.

I want to leave you, as I often do, with the words of a song, "Sovereign Over Us" by Michael W. Smith (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lay-r2g52SQ), which I think pretty well sums up this passage:

There is strength within our sorrow
There is beauty in our tears
And you meet us in our mourning
With a love that casts out fear
You are working in our waiting
Sanctifying us
When beyond our understanding
You're teaching us to trust

Your plans are still to prosper
You have not forgotten us
You're with us in the fire and the flood
You're faithful forever
Perfect in love
You are Sovereign over us

You are wisdom unimangined
Who could understand Your ways
Reigning high above the heavens
Reaching down in endless grace
You're the lifter of the lowly
Compassionate and kind
You surround and you uphold me
Your promises are my delight

Your plans are still to prosper
You have not forgotten us
You're with us in the fire and the flood
You're faithful forever
Perfect in love
You are Sovereign over us

Even what the enemy means for evil
You turn it for our good
You turn it for our good
And for Your glory
Even in the valley You are faithful
You're working for our good
You're working for our good
And for Your glory

Your plans are still to prosper
You have not forgotten us
You're with us in the fire and the flood
You're faithful forever
Perfect in love
You are Sovereign over us

Aldates No. 9 - I am... Afraid?

I am… Afraid? – An attempt at finding peace in the quiet place

- The Entity -

When we were choosing our spiritual disciplines for the assignment in term one, I initially took one look at the discipline of solitude and decided then and there to avoid it like the plague. Why, you might ask? Put simply, I know myself. (Or so I thought…) I knew that if I as an introvert gave myself even the tiniest excuse to not be present, I never would, especially at the start of the year when so much of what we were doing was going and meeting new people (something I have and probably always will struggle with, at least outside of specific circumstances). Past experiences of life lived away at home have taught me a lot about how not to do life with other people, and in particular highlighted the need for me to be able to put myself out there and make connections, lest I fall into another deep dark pit of loneliness and depression. Fun times… Anyway, the Christmas break this year brought up a whole bunch of stuff I didn’t even realise I was struggling with, in particular around why I do some of the things I do or don’t do (To anyone reading this who also read my term one report on simplicity, honestly just disregard most of what I said in that, it turns out I had completely the wrong idea... To anyone who didn’t, don’t worry about it, you didn’t miss much). To summarise, what I discovered is that I am really bad at being alone, and even worse at being alone “well”. While simplicity was good in the sense that it allowed me to be more present, it also masked what was arguably the much bigger issue in that I really struggle with being absent. More to the point, I discovered I have some pretty deep rooted insecurities around being by myself, but to go into those in any kind of depth would take a whole other report, and to be honest I would rather not deal with that right now. In short though, I’ve realised that in order to better be in community, I first need to be able to be away from community.

Enter the discipline of solitude. At first glance, an introvert’s dream. Post university (though I’ve only recently realised this), my worst nightmare. I initially set about trying to practice this discipline with some pretty clear goals in mind. Find a space, for a set time, alone, with no distractions other than the ones in my own head. Just me, my thoughts, and God. All of me. All to God. Nothing more. Nothing less.

This presented a problem however: At what point does “finding the quiet place” start becoming legalistic? Or, even worse, at what point does it become about chasing a feeling rather than chasing God? John Mark Comer’s book “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” suggests starting small with this, and so I did. On day one, I set a timer for 5 minutes, found a quiet place, and sat there for a bit. This was - perhaps unsurprisingly - a pretty underwhelming experience, both in the sense that nothing of note really happened and also in that it wasn’t even particularly “challenging”. Before I had even begun to really settle into anything, my timer was beeping at me telling me I was done. The next couple of days were rather similar, and though I upped the timer to 10 minutes it didn’t really feel as if anything had changed. Quiet times were over before they even really felt like they had begun, and to be honest I was beginning to feel a little bit demotivated. What was the point in me doing this if nothing was going to come of it? Instead of giving up however, I did pretty much the only thing I could think of at the time, and upped the timer again.

It was at this point everything shifted. It turns out that past about the 10 minute mark, being left alone by yourself in a quiet place with nothing for company but your own thoughts gets really rather uncomfortable. I have always, even at the best of times, been a bit of an overthinker, and recently discovered loneliness related anxiety kinda just puts the icing on the proverbial cake in that regard. Seemingly little things end up getting blown up way out of proportion and even though logically you know you should be fine, you can’t help but think about how much longer you have to endure before you’re done and can escape back to some form of “normality”. Maybe this kind of reaction is reasonable initially, maybe it isn’t, I’m not really sure. More likely it is simply a product of my having spent most of the past 13 years of my life in a constant state of doing things (read escapism in the form of video games) in an attempt to not have to deal with the real world more than I absolutely have to, which is one of the biggest barriers I was hoping to be able to break through this year. On balance, I think I’m going to call the fact I’ve finally confronted that a positive.

It might seem a little strange, especially given how challenged I felt to attempt this in the first place, but day five was the first day I actually thought to pray into these quiet times. My prayer was a pretty simple one: "God, I give this time to you" which made it all more personally frustrating when I managed to get distracted by things going on outside my window three minutes in. I did manage a full 15 minutes after that point, but it wasn’t quite what I hoped it might be. Day six on the other hand, although similar, was significantly more prayerful, and much more positive. There is something incredibly freeing about coming to God with *everything* in your head, no matter how crazy, or weird, or just plain unhelpful it might seem, and just giving it all to Him. He knows it all anyway, but in our vulnerability He redeems that which we give him to redeem. Whenever my thoughts wandered, I would just pray “All for you” to refocus and return to the quiet place, and for the first time since I started I began to feel at peace there.

That peace was shattered on day 8, when I was forced to confront the possibility of being *alone* alone for the first time. I won’t go into too much detail here, but suffice to say my quiet time was in a place other than the house, and my anxiety went off on one about 10 minutes in. It was so bad that the only thing I could think to do was pray “protect me” which might seem strange as I was never in any real danger, but the moment I did I was just filled with a supernatural sense of peace. I wish I could say that that sense lasted, but the truth is it was only in praying that prayer continually on the way back to the house I was able to remain in that place. Walking through that door felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I still don’t entirely know what to make of what happened on that day, but I am thankful that God was with me through it, because I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t been. Despite all this though, I felt challenged to go further, and so I upped the timer again, to 30 minutes this time.

Considering what a massive step up this promised to be (from 15 minutes to 30) quiet time on days 9 and 10 was surprisingly easy, nothing of note really happened. This turned out to be a bit of a double edged sword however, as I hit a bit of a brick wall after this point. I had been so sure that increasing my time in the quiet place would result in significant changes, that when it didn’t it kind of killed my motivation to be alone in that way. Day 10 was the last day silence and solitude looked anything like my original plan, but thankfully it is far from the end of the story. From day 11 onwards, quiet times were a lot less structured, and consisted mostly either of prayer walking around Christ Church Meadow, or of reading and praying through whatever passages of scripture I felt drawn to on that particular day. (The “Saints Alive!” weekly chunk readings and daily bible passages helped quite a bit with this, as to begin with I wasn’t really following any sort of reading plan). This actually marked a pretty significant step forward for me, as motivating myself to leave the house without a specific reason has been a real struggle for me at times, so the fact I’ve been able to motivate myself to go on prayer walks alone is probably a bigger deal for me than it might seem. More recently I have been working through the new testament in chronological order as a personal challenge for the season of lent, using an app called “A Lamp Unto” which has been pretty interesting, as it has highlighted all the ways the gospels are both incredibly similar (looking at you Matthew Mark and Luke) and incredibly different (John) but still carry the same message. This app has actually been incredibly helpful, as you can set it to put a notification on your phone at a set time each day to remind you to do the reading, which has made it really easy to build into my morning routine, and significantly cut down on the amount of time I am spending on social media, which is a bonus (turning off all notifications from Facebook and Instagram probably helped quite a bit with that as well – another recommendation from JMC’s book). These times in my mornings have been for the most part fairly positive, and are something I think I will probably continue even at the end of lent, but they don’t really achieve what I initially set out to do by taking on this challenge. Through this experience I am coming to realise that solitude and simplicity aren’t actually so different. While simplicity is about setting aside your desire for worldly things in order to hear from God better, solitude is about setting aside *yourself* for the same reason.

The question on my mind is this: Is God not present if I don’t “feel” something? In view of not wanting to sound heretical here, clearly God is always present, it is in his nature, but I think it’s probably fair of me to say that sometimes his presence is more obvious than at other times. My goal starting out was to get to a place where I could feel comfortable searching for Him in the quiet place, and to a certain extent you could argue that I have succeeded in this goal, but looking back, it’s a little bit difficult to see how exactly. It certainly doesn’t feel like anything has changed. Quiet times as they are right now are positive, but not really something new. God has absolutely shown up at times, but at other times it has felt a bit like trying to chase the wind, a pointless exercise. In the end though, as it says in 1 Kings 19: The LORD was not in the wind, or the earthquake, or the fire, but in the gentle whisper. My worry is that in chasing the dramatic, I might have inadvertently missed the whole point of the discipline, to find and be found by God in the simplicity of the still small voice.

To end, I just want to leave you with the words of a song which has been very significant for me over the past few weeks. The song is “God Help Me” by Plumb, and it is my prayer over myself both right now and going forward, that I would continue to seek God in the quiet place, and go (or stay) wherever He is calling me, whatever the cost.

 

 

God Help Me: Plumb - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wRpTySE_8A

There’s a wrestling in my heart and my mind
A disturbance and a tension I cannot seem to drive
And if I’m honest there’s quite a bit of fear
To sit here in this silence and really hear you
What will you ask of me?
Will I listen to your voice when you speak?

Help me to move
Help me to see
Help me to do whatever you would ask of me
Help me to go
God help me to stay
I’m feeling so alone here and I know that You’re faithful
But I can barely breathe
God help me

Sometimes things, they are black and white
Sometimes they are not and that leaves us torn inside
And in the middle we are left to wonder
Who we are, what you want, and where we’re going
Oh such a mystery
I don’t always understand
But I believe

Help me to move
Help me to see
Help me to do whatever you   would ask of me
Help me to go
God help me to stay
I’m feeling so alone here and I know that You’re faithful
But I can barely breathe
God help me

I don’t know the future
It’s one day at a time
But I know I’ll be OK with your hand holding mine
So take all my resistance
Oh God I need your grace
One step and then the other
Show me the way

Help me to move
Help me to see
Help me to do whatever you would ask of me
Help me to go
God help me to stay
I’m feeling so alone here and I know that You’re faithful
But I can barely breathe
God help me