Living Wittily

Learning to wonder at the way the world is.

Two miracles spotted while walking in Garlogie - a speckled wood butterfly, and a turquoise damsel fly. No camera with me so no photos of either. A Google search will take you to them.

 

Decades ago in the philosophy of religion class we argued about the argument from design. I've never been sure how far such an argument takes me as a way of making belief in God more reasonable, or plausible, or faith more secure.

 

I tend to be more persuaded by wonder, that inner raising of the eyebrows at the mysteries of life, beauty, and goodness. Wonder is both mental event and emotional response, unasked and unexpected joy in such inexplicable pleasures as watching a turquoise damsel fly absorbing radiant heat and energy from the sun, its luminescent bands ridiculously noticeable against the dull brown path-trodden grass.

 

Standing in warm sunlight enjoying, (note the word joy in the middle of the word), I thought of C. S. Lewis's classic one liner from his paper "Is Theology Poetry?" "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.”

 

The photo I did take with my phone was of something altogether more prosaic - late summer heather doing its bit, along with a diversity of grasses, repopulating and rewilding what used to be a planted forest of pines. Perhaps heather, this ubiquitous Scottish shrub, was the third miracle of the day.

TFTD July 29-Aug 4: Isaiah's Message, "God has got this!"

Monday

Isaiah 40.1-2 “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”

To people who had been through long years of exile, the loss of home, the daily friction of living in an alien culture, and unable to change things for the better, the Word of God comes, “Comfort.” There are things we can’t change, times when only God can help. Comfort means consolation and strengthening, an inner change of mind-set, and starting to believe again that newness can happen. Whatever is going on in your life, look at it and say, ignoring the poor grammar, “God has got this.”

Tuesday

Isaiah 40.3 “A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

Isaiah announces the coming of God into lives crying out for hope. In the wilderness, when the way is hard and we thirst for hope, we wander and stumble, unsure where we are going. Then the command goes out - “Straight roads! A new way! God is coming.” At times like these we are living through, when familiar landmarks seem to have disappeared, God comes - and the world will always look different with God on the horizon. Any wilderness is transformed when God is there, when God is here.

Wednesday

Isaiah 40.4 “Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.”

Civil engineering works are taking place in the wilderness world of broken dreams, failed hopes, and lost purpose in life. Comfort is more than consolation. It is long promised help, when God comes to transform, to make new things happen, to change the landscape and show us a new way forward. Martin Luther King spoke these words in one of the great sermons of the 20^th Century – they are liberation words, hope infused words; they are about God building a highway into human life.

Thursday

Isaiah 40.5 “And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all humanity will see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

God’s glory is revealed in His coming, in the blessing of his people, in mercy and judgement, in grace and faithfulness to all God’s promises. As Christians, reading these ancient words to God’s people Israel, we see God’s glory shining in the face of Jesus Christ. We have beheld that glory, full of grace and truth. God’s way of deliverance is the veiled glory of the incarnation, the hidden glory of the cross, and the dazzling glory of the resurrection. Into a wilderness world came Jesus Christ, Son of God, through whom God is revealed in judgement, grace and reconciling love.

Thursday

Isaiah 40.6-7 “A voice says, ‘Cry out.’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ ‘All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.”

God’s glory is eternal, human life for all its glory, is transient. Again and again the Bible warns and reminds us, human life is time limited. To live wisely and well is to live towards God, to trust in God as Creator and Redeemer. Our glory is a borrowed splendour, it is entire gift. The true glory of our lives shines out of our faith in Christ, our hope in Him, and our love for the Lord of Glory, who died and rose again for us.

Friday

Isaiah 40.7 “The grass withers, and the flowers fall because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass.”

Isaiah is reminding the people of God that life is God’s gift. For all of us life has its seasons, and there’s no road back to Spring from Autumn. But as Paul said, “If we die, we die to the Lord, and if we live, we live to the Lord. Whether we live or die we are the Lord’s.” All through Isaiah that message reverberates – we live in, and for, and to the Lord, because “Our life is hid with Christ in God.”

Saturday

Isaiah 40.8 “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands for ever.”

So, life is short, transient, time limited. But the Creator who first breathed life into every one of us is eternal, and it is God’s Word that finally matters. That Word is spoken finally and forever in Jesus Christ. These sombre verses about us being like a flower that fades, and grass that withers, are to be read alongside the sure Gospel promises, the Word of our God which stands forever: “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ…” That’s pure Isaiah!

Sunday

Isaiah 40.9 “You who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, ‘Here is your God!’”

The coming of God is to be shouted, a chain reaction of praise from mountain to Temple. To the desperate question “Where is God in this wilderness?” the answer comes, loud and clear, “Here is your God.” Praise is the music of defiance, when God’s people envision mountains made low, but enough high hills are left for the heralds of God’s coming to use as platforms for God’s praise!

Books and Bookbinders: The Joy of Restoration

One of the significant losses of service at the university is the on-site bookbinder. Years ago I had two books rebound at the book bindery, restoring to life books that are comparatively rare. They were The History of English Congregationalism, by R. W. Dale, and the biography of Charles Simeon, by William Carus published in 1847. Simeon was John Stott's theological hero and a significant influence on his understanding of the goals of preaching and biblical exposition.

 

Last night I was chasing through Dale's Congregationalism, using the index, in pursuit of some of the 17th Century argy-bargies about what the church was and wasn't, what was a true church and what criteria decide this, what should be preached and what should be prohibited. Dale's book beautifully rebound 20 years ago, is an 800 page narrative account of Congregationalism, full of the gossip, incidental details, and hard to find elsewhere information that make many of those fat Victorian books still fascinating and useful.

 

Where else would you find the full text of the Savoy Declaration, lists of protagonists and upstarts in the power struggles of State and Church, woven throughout names like Baxter and Goodwin (Thomas the Calvinist and John the Arminian), Howe and Owen? As Church History, it's very different from the way we do it now. But Dale both knew the story and was a powerful proponent of Congregationalism and Independency. His book is a monument to those Victorian nonconformists who became such a powerful social presence in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

 

The rebinding is a work of skill and craft, making this old book a joy to handle, gold blocking and maroon buckram - what's not to love? When I bought it, it was described by the seller as tatty and disbound! For those who love the book as human artefact, the loss of a skilled bookbinder is to be genuinely regretted.

TFTD July 22-28: Your Lovingkindness is Better than Life."

Monday

Psalm 63.1 “You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.”

Forget the abundance of rain of Scotland. Real thirst is felt in the desert, in times of drought. The Psalm-poet understood the dangers of dehydration, and the desperation of thirst. Longing for God is a thirst only God can quench. “You are God, my God…” This is personal, a longing to know God’s presence, to be near God and know God is near. This verse is the prayer of the dehydrated soul seeking the life-giving living water to refresh faith and confirm once more the grace of “my God.”

Tuesday

Psalm 63.3-4 “Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.”

Love inspires commitment, self-giving, devotion, and all of these growing out of knowing we are loved with an everlasting love. What can be better than to live in the love of God, to love and to be loved in return? “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4.19) There is in love a mutual exchange, a reciprocal relationship of lover and beloved. Except it is God who in His grace always takes the initiative in love. Our response is gratitude and praise, worship and obedience, for as long as we live.

Wednesday

Psalm 63.5 “I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.”

So we move from deserts and thirst, to a table spread with the kind of buffet you can visit till you are stuffed! The Psalm-poet finds in God the complete fulfilment of all that he is, and all he is called to be. The mouth isn’t only for eating, remember, it is also the organ of praise, the source of words that give thanks and celebrate the hospitality and welcome of God. These five verses are a rebuke to our complacency and familiarity, our taking for granted what is God’s always astonishing goodness.

Thursday

Psalm 63.6 “On my bed I remember you: I think of you through the watches of the night.”

Often enough it’s anxiety or an over-active mind that keeps us awake. The Psalm-poet recommends praise, thanksgiving, remembering God’s past blessings and trusting that the one whose love is better than life, has your back! Psalm 4.8 “I will lie down and sleep in peace.” Then there’s this, “He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” As one elderly friend said of this verse, “If the Lord doesn’t sleep, there’s no point in both of us staying awake.” That said, the next best thing to sleep is to remember, think about and rest in the peace of the God whose lovingkindness is better than life Why? Because that love is life-giving and utterly to be trusted.

Friday

Psalm 63.7 “Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings.”

Four wings adorned the Ark of the Covenant held in the Temple. And we don’t need to be ornithologists to recognise the image of shelter, protection and motherly care for young chicks still vulnerable and dependent. Then the line from the hymn ‘O God of Bethel’, familiar to Scottish people of previous generations: “O spread thy covering wings around, till all our wanderings cease…” So we don’t cower under the protective care of God, we sing; we don’t panic, we praise. Because He is our help!

Saturday

Psalm 63.8 “My soul clings to you, your right hand upholds me.”

“Soul” means the whole of who we are, the essence of what it means to be you, or me. The Psalm poet is hanging on to God for all he is worth, knowing the safest place is to be in the presence of God, where we are held in the purposive love of our Heavenly Father. For the first time in the Psalm there’s a hint of trouble, threat, of life going wrong. He is holding on for dear life to the one whose strong right hand is holding on to him. Always it’s God’s hold that is the stronger, indeed the strongest.

Sunday.

 Psalm 63.9-11 “Those who want to kill me will be destroyed; they will go down to the depths of the earth. They will be given over to the sword and become food for jackals. But the king will rejoice in God; all who swear by God will glory in him, while the mouths of liars will be silenced.

We’ve moved from safety to danger, from the shadow of God’s wings to the darker shadows of our deepest fears of whatever threatens us in life. Faith is not only believing that God can keep us and hold on to us. Faith is also trust that God undermines and overthrows the powers of evil in the world. The Psalm poet seeks God, knows God’s love is better than life, he lies awake in bed remembering his own story and God’s provisions. Now he faces his worst fears, and imagines his enemies judged and punished. But he teaches us to look for evil’s defeat!

As Christians we look out on a world where so much is wrong. But we do so as a resurrection people. God raised Jesus from the dead. In Jesus Christ, incarnate, crucified and risen, the victory of God is secured. God’s enemies are scattered, the mouths of liars silenced, and Jesus our King is at the right hand of God. He is our help; we dwell under the shadow of God’s wings; his love is better than life. Amen.

In Praise of Garden Centres

Garden centres have become leisure places of choice. Most of them have a coffee shop and restaurant. With coffee there are (usually) outsized scones, portions of tray bakes the size of small lock block units, and any amount of your coffee or tea of choice. 

Over the years they have grown in size and range of facilities which can include women's fashion, outdoor clothing, brand food outlets described as high quality and correspondingly high priced. Then there's the full range of household bric a brac, greeting cards, house and garden ornaments, garden furniture and tools, and landscaping materials from compost to bark, paving stones to aggregates, and trees to turf.

In fairness, there are also wide stocks of garden plants and shrubs, household plants and seasonal bedding plants. We all go to such places, and not always for that packet of seeds, or the odd household plant. The garden centre has become a gathering place providing social space for families, couples, friends, business meetings, and all under one roof with an ever increasing range of retail options for those looking to wander around. 

We go to such places for all kinds of reasons. I can end up there on a wet day because it's largely inside, there's a lot to browse, there's coffee and scone or a breakfast or lunch. Nearly always you see folk you know, and even if you don't conversations tend to happen when you're browsing around plants, tools, or food shelves. I've always thought it's worth asking why certain kinds of shop or service outlet becomes popular. With garden centres it's the attractive combination of good food, the buzz of a place that's usually busy, a well set out environment, and human company and activity. 

It says something about our culture and our daily lives that social spaces like garden centres are important places of human intersection. Those who are lonely and simply need a sense of people around them; those looking for safe space and some peace and quiet; people whose spirits are jaded and in need of stimulus, something to take them out of themselves; and people like me, older, retired, active, interested in all things horticultural, partial to a a nice coffee or meal, or even needing somewhere to walk around out of the rain!

One other quite small, but for myself significant benefits, is that there is so much beauty to see, and looking is free. The flowers in the photos were taken at one or two of our local garden centres. "He has made everything beautiful in its time." Indeed.   

Ecclesiastes, Eternity and the Transience of Time.

Tucked away between the buttresses of the harbour breakwater at Stonehaven, is a relic from the past when hundreds of fishing boats filled the harbour. Its main purpose to give a secure anchor point for some of those boats.

 

History requires both information and imagination. Over the 200 years since Robert Stevenson designed this phase of an already ancient harbour, and later generations expanded and strengthened it, it has provided a safe place for so many lives and livelihoods. This bollard has its own stories to tell. Imagine storms just as violent as recent weather patterns, and dozens of fishing boats heading out taking with them many of the men of the town as skippers and crew, and the risks that were a way of life.

 

It could do with another coat of paint, though part of me has always acknowledged the appearance of rust as a natural reminder of the transience of things. That goes back to childhood days on the farms, and memories of old sheets of corrugated iron, obsolete implements lying in corners, 40 gallon drums once used for watering the animals, all of them marked by the encroachments of time, slowly rusting away.

 

As a solid, rusting, but defiant reminder of former time, this old anchor pointit also reminds me of the elegiac realism of Qoheleth in Ecclesiastes 3 and his famous poem about time. He adds this reflection, which was somewhere in the back of my mind as I took this photo of an all but forgotten and hidden anchor point for generations before us.

 

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.

Whatever is has already been,

and what will be has been before;

and God will call the past to account."

Ecclesiastes 3.11-15

TFTD July 15-21 "Lord, Teach Us to Pray."

 

 

Monday

Luke 11.1 “One day Jesus was in a certain place praying. As he finished, one of his disciples asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” 

Like the intimate and open conversation between ourselves and our most trusted friends, prayer is both a gift and a discipline. In prayer we trust and entrust ourselves to Jesus our most faithful Friend, who has taught us to say “Our Father in heaven.” Be that disciple who isn’t embarrassed to pray, “Lord teach me to pray.” We learn by doing. And so we grow in the grace of Christ through constant conversation with God, before the throne of grace, where we are welcome, heard, and understood.

 

Tuesday

Matt 6.5 “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.”

We pray for all kinds of reasons, some of them good and sincere, some of them not so much! God knows our heart, our motives and the things that drive us to prayer. Most of our prayers are tinged with self-interest – seeking blessing, praying for those we love, unburdening guilt or anxiety. That’s all fine, “God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” (I Jn 3.20) But prayer mustn’t be a put on performance to impress others. Always speak to God with confidence, and in strict confidence!

Wednesday

Matt 6.6 “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

The reward is that we are heard, and that we know we have poured out our secret desires before the Love we trust, and placed our hidden longings into the safest of hands. We never pray but God is there, attentive and knowing, loving and forgiving, touching us with grace both gentle and powerful, holiness restoring our wholeness. Jesus is speaking from experience, his own intimate trust in God is to be the model for all our praying. When we pray we are enfolded in love, and upheld by grace. 

Thursday

Matt 6.7-8 “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

There’s no need to talk God to a standstill! We won’t wear God down with conveyor belt prayer requests. We don’t need to persuade, coerce or put pressure on God – as if we ever could! No, Jesus is telling us that prayer is more about letting God get a word in edgeways. Speak your heart, God already knows all that’s in there, even what we can’t put into words. Prayer is an act of trust, not an information bulletin to let God know what’s going on. Our every prayer is a confession of our dependence on God, and is an act of faith that God, in loving wisdom, knows what is good for us.

Friday

Romans 12.12 “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”

Joy doesn’t just happen, nor is hope mere optimism. Joy is a decision based on gratitude to God, and hope is faith arguing against leaving God out of the equation. Patience when life feels crushing draws its strength from persistent trust in the God of hope. But our faith, and hope and joy are sustained by God. So it’s when every aspect of our lives is faithfully brought before God that we receive the strength to go on trusting, grace to continue in hope, and develop resilience as disciples of Jesus.

Saturday

Ephesians 6.18 “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.”

This is Paul in full-on mode! All occasions, all kinds of prayers and requests, always keep on praying for all the saints! Prayer isn’t confined to a quiet time, and once it’s done that’s it till tomorrow. Prayer is more a way of viewing the world with God on the horizon; meeting circumstances of crisis or routine with a prayerful disposition. Prayer is our second nature, a default Christian approach to problem solving, the fulfilling of God’s call to be a conduit of God’s grace, love and presence in the lives of others. “Be alert”, pay attention to the world around you - and talk to God about it.

Sunday

Ephesians 6 19-20 “Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains.”

This is the loveable, vulnerable Paul. Oh, he fully believed all he wrote about God’s grace being sufficient, that nothing can separate us from the love of God, and he can do all things through Christ who strengthens him. But that’s just the point, it’s Christ who strengthens him, and God’s grace that is sufficient. In ways we can never know, but fully believe, our prayers give renewed faith, recovered strength, and fresh resilience, to those we know are struggling, and for whom we faithfully pray. There is a communion of saints that is both mystery and miracle. We are the Body of Christ and individually members of it – when we pray for each other we pray for ourselves, and our common life in Christ. We each have the right to ask - “Pray also for me.”  

Restoring Mercy to the Lexicon of the Good Life.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Jesus was a teacher who understood the importance of one liners, those short sentences crafted with such care that they stick like Velcro in the memory.

We don’t use the word mercy much these days, more’s the pity. Actually, the word pity is at least part of what it means to be merciful, so yes the world would be a lot safer and less harsh if there was more pity. Compassion is another alternative word, mercy as feeling for and with others, caring about other people’s hurt, their daily struggles to make ends meet financially, emotionally, or socially. All four Gospels tell stories of Jesus being merciful, having pity for those who are suffering, showing compassion to the hungry, the wounded, the lonely, those on the margins, the easily overlooked.

The Psalm-writing poet links our ability to be merciful to the character of the God we believe in and worship. “You Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” (Psalm 86.15) That is what God is like, and Jesus shows us what that looks like in practice when mercy becomes a way of life.

We could do with a rediscovery of mercy, a word in danger of falling out of our daily vocabulary. Mercy is the tilt of the heart towards those whose lives can be made better by our kindness and generosity. Mercy is compassionate practical caring about what is happening to folk who are struggling. By the way, Jesus says “Blessed are the merciful!” God blesses merciful actions. Indifference, selfishness, carelessness, not so much! Hearts closed to mercy are closed from the inside.

Tracing My Intellectual Footsteps 1. Evelyn Underhill.

After a lifetime of reading it's a good thing to look back at your footprints, and at the paths that have led to the here and now of life. Then to reflect on who were were, and who we are, and who we might yet become. 

We all have our 'favourite' books, intellectual debts to various writers and thinker, poets and novelists, theologians and historians. They too can seem like so many mountain footpaths, winding towards each other and finally converging on the place we are now standing, or sitting.

 

My reading journey has involved a lot of meandering, an enjoyment of variety, places I've stopped a while and others I quickly passed through. Some writers changed the direction of my thinking, others enriched my inner landscape, many I enjoyed at the time but moved on, one or two mattered so much I have gone back to re-read. Looking back, some of those paths were a diversion without adequate reward, others took me to places which changed the way I look on the world.

 

We each have our network of paths, the unique pattern of our own footprints, our own journey to make. My list is not your list. But in the spirit of appreciation, I'll offer a short series of brief appreciations of those writers who I believe have helped to form the ways I think and feel about God and my own journey in trying to follow faithfully after Jesus Christ. 

 

In the early 1980s I discovered Evelyn Underhill, the Anglican spiritual writer who was an authority on mysticism, and especially in later life, a leader of retreats that focused on the contemplative life. I read most of what she had written and published. At one point I had half a shelf of her books, all of which I read, each of them a further education in a form of spirituality not often encountered within the evangelical tradition. The titles give an idea of what she was about: Mystics of the Church; Practical Mysticism; Concerning the Inner Life; The Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today; The School of Charity; An Anthology of the Love of God. And a couple of dozen more, from the esoteric to mainstream Christian devotion. 

 

Underhill was an upper middle class woman of independent means, married to a barrister, Hubert Moore. Reading her can be an exercise in patience, her tone at times can seem quite condescending. That's to misunderstand her. She wrote for the academy one kind of book, and for ordinary Christians seeking a deeper devotional life, she wrote quite differently. At her worst she can be annoyingly homely, at her best she wrote with devotional power and psychological insight and as one who practised what she wrote. That's what made her such an effective and popular retreat leader.

 

A good sample of her best writing is contained in An Anthology of the Love of God. One of her best poems, Immanence, shows off the contemplative theology that informed so much of her devotional and spiritual writing. From Evelyn Underhill I learned that prayer is less about speaking than listening, less about my needs and more about spending time in the presence of the God of grace and love. There is a practicality that never depends on a simple 'how to' approach - she was not writing at the 'Mysticism for Dummies' level. 

 

It would also be true that, true to her Anglican and Prayer Book commitments, she gave considerable weight to God as Creator and Christ as God incarnate. While not neglecting the cross as sacrifice, she interpreted the whole work of God as the Eternal purpose expressed in the very nature of God as self-giving love. The poem Immanence is a beautifully expressed theology of divine humility and the willing kenosis of the Eternal God whose name and nature is self-giving love.

 

While my own theology has a stronger rootedness in atonement expressed in Trinitarian terms, I owe to Evelyn Underhill a sense of the love of God made actual in Christ, and by grace replicated in 'the little things' that become sacraments as we sense and see the presence of God in the actualities of existence, in the moments of prayer, in our kneeling in worship, in bird song and sunset, and in crib and cross.     

 

Immanence, Evelyn Underhill

 

I come in the little things,

Saith the Lord;
Not borne on morning wings
Of majesty; but I have set my feet
Amidst the delicate and bladed wheat
That springs triumphant in the furrowed sod—
There do I dwell, in weakness and in power;
Not broken or divided, said our God!
In your straight garden plot I come to flower;
About your porch my vine,
Meek, fruitful, doth entwine,
Waits, at the threshold, Love's appointed hour.

I come in the little things,
Saith the Lord;
Yea, on the glancing wings
Of eager birds, the soft and pattering feet
Of furred and gentle beasts, I come to meet
Your hard and wayward heart. In brown bright eyes
That peep from out the brake, I stand confest.
On every nest
Where feathery Patience is content to brood
And leaves her pleasure for the high emprise
Of motherhood—
There does my Godhead rest.

I come in the little things,
Saith the Lord;
My starry wings I do forsake,
Love's highway of humility to take;
Meekly I fit my stature to your need.
In beggar's part
About your gates I shall not cease to plead
As man, to speak with man
Till by such art
I shall achieve my immemorial plan;
Pass the low lintel of the human heart.

"The lion shall lie down with the lamb..."?

I omitted to note the artist of this sculpted relief in the first gallery of Aberdeen Art Gallery. (I'll put that right next time I'm there.) This relief was on the reverse side of a main sculpture, and I was intrigued by the image of lion and lamb. "The lion shall lie down with the lamb" is a frequent misquotation of Isaiah 11.6. But here's the full text:

 

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,

and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;

and a little child shall lead them."

 

But allowing for the misquotation, and remembering that the Lion and Lamb are key symbols in the book of Revelation, for the risen Christ and the sacrifice of Christ, I read verses like this as intentional subversion of our pessimism, despair, resignation and culpable giving in to the dominant realities of our times. You know them; they dominate our ever-present news feeds.

 

Isaiah, and the book of Revelation are texts that teach us to question and resist those dominant realities, ideologies of oppression and greed, political and military actions of violence, and the use and abuse of words and images to foment hate and cruelty in order to dehumanise other people and peoples.

 

Time after time the Prophets point to an alternative way of ordering our politics and power in ways that make for peace. Of course, the Prophets looked on the world and history with God on the horizon. I confess, so do I - "God help us" is less a pious expletive than a genuine cry of the heart.

And so I pray "Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." And yes, allowing for the slippage of images, I can settle for a vision of the lion lying down with the lamb, because I pray to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and to the Lion of the tribe of Judah who triumphed over death.

 

And so I pray for our world, its wolves and lambs, leopards and goats, lions and calves. And I do so because in ways beyond our knowing and his, Isaiah looked to the impossible possibility of a child leading and saving a broken world; "For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself..." Or so it seems to me.