Cycles

A few days ago, I had one of the best days of my life. In the space of 3 hours, I passed my driving test, replaced my dead laptop with a brand new Mac (and complimentary promotional iPod touch), and got offered the job that I had applied and interviewed for (as a healthcare assistant in a young people's psychiatric unit)!

I was pretty overwhelmed by all this good news, and didn't quite know how to react to it all! I couldn't remember the last time I had been bowled over by such generous, abundant blessing. Pretty amazing. I felt very grateful and lucky.

It has got me thinking about cycles. It is hard to break out of cycles, habits, assumptions you build over your whole life. People who work with vulnerable populations, the 'down and out', are trained in this issue well, and 'breaking cycles' is spoken of again and again. But I think it is true of most people as well.

My default thinking pattern and expectation is to be negative. I expect bad news, or little good news, I think, most of my days. I expect to fail at things, I expect disappointment and hardship and struggle. Sometimes I don't really know where these expectations come from - I have lived a privileged life and am very lucky in the worldly sense. Dave pointed out that I have passed and got everything that I have applied for in my life thus far, and I realized that factually, he is right. Yet in my head and heart I spend so much mental and emotional energy worrying about and expecting failure. And I don't quite know how to react to the good things, or how to hang onto them and gain strength and energy. I struggle to break the cycle.

When people speak about blessing and gratitude in a spiritual sense, I have these past few years gained quite a Kierkgaardian perspective on it all. I've never quite believed in hanging on to God's blessings in the sense of good things that he gives and good things that happen, and praising his name and goodness on account of those things. Because I know that they can so easily be taken away, or bad things can happen, and if you stake the notion of God's blessings and goodness on good things and events, then it becomes frail and dependent on those things, and will surely crumble in times of trouble. In my head my default is to try and understand God's goodness in a very Job-like fashion; that he is good no matter what happens, and we must praise him whether he gives or takes away.

But at this juncture I am learning about blessings, about the good things as well as well as the bad (or neutral). That God is the author and source of those things too, and it is ok to thank and praise him for those things, all the while not becoming dependent on them for one's understanding of God's unchanging nature.

So I praise God, and thank him for everything he has done.

'When I am afraid, I will trust in you'

Reading Scripture at this time of uncertainty, realizing that the psalmists proclaim trust and hope in God like battle cries.

Trusting and hoping in God are active states. They are declared, like punches that grab at the reality that God wants us to live in. They are a running against the current, against the very real despair and worries in which the psalmists live.

Very much like we may live in now. For those of us who don't live under the relentless opposition of kingdoms wanting to kill us, we may live with the stress and strain of the future or our own inner demons tearing us apart. At this juncture, where many of us look into the future and all there is a blank, an open space of trembling uncertainty and lack of security, we must trust and hope in God.

What does that mean?

Life changes, people change, but God never changes. He is good, and trustworthy, and faithful, all the time. He has always been who He is, and always will be.

So we who live here in this strange land, in this strange place in time, we proclaim hope and trust in Him like battle cries. When everything in us and around us feels like all that we have is out of control and there's no way out of it. We remember that God is still God. We remember things like Psalm 56, and all they mean. We remember that we must fight to trust, hope, and have faith in the God of inconceivable goodness and power of whom our whole lives are praise.

And we say, Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Job 1:20-21

Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshipped. And he said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

'And the bride will run to her lover's arms...'

"The Bible tells many stories of human marriages...But above these stories the Bible tells a bigger story, the story of a marriage which includes within itself the whole history and future of the human race. It is the story of God the Lover, the Bridegroom, the Husband, and his people his Beloved, his Bride, and in the end his Wife. It is the story that John the Baptist had in mind when he spoke of Jesus as the 'Bridegroom' (John 3:25-30), and the story that Jesus himself accepted when he spoke of himself as the 'Bridegroom' (eg. Mt 9:14-15). It is the story Paul referred to when he spoke of the church being 'engaged' to Jesus Christ like a pure virgin (2 Cor 11:2).

It is the story that John speaks of in the visionary imagery of Revelation 19 and 21... At the climax of human history John hears the announcement, 'The marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready' (Rev 19:7). The Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, is to be married at last. His Bride is his people, every believer of all time, corporately to be joined to him forever in a union of unmixed delight and intimacy. This is a time of joy and amazement. And then, in Revelation 21, John sees the heavenly Jerusalem, that is, the whole new heavens and new earth, the restored and redeemed created order, coming down out of heaven as a city, but not only a city, also a bride...'the bride, the wife of the Lamb' (Rev 21:2,9). All of the people of God in the new heavens and new earth are the bride of Jesus Christ. That is to say, he loves them passionately, and they love him with an answering love.

And in that new age their love will be consummated with an intimacy and enduring delight that the best human marriage can only begin faintly to echo... This is an amazing and beautiful prospect: a time when all the deepest yearnings and longings of the human heart will be fulfilled. And it is open to all who will come in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ in this age. The invitation is open."

- Christopher Ash, 'Married for God'