Issue 191
If you have ever lost your way or feel somewhat lost at the moment you will be no stranger to a cocktail of feelings and experiences: a sense of panic, anxiety and dread; the frustration at not knowing solutions; the demeaning nature of sensing loss of value or self worth; the nagging feeling of failure. You can add to the list with a range of hard-edged irritation-type reactions to the softer centred hurts that leave you somewhat vulnerable.
If you have come through such an experience you will also know that the routes out or the ways back are as varied as the paths in. The range of recovery stories is as encyclopaedic as the number of characters involved. So I will suggest to you a few themes of these stories.
For some, the road to recovery doesn’t start with a comforting hand but a slap on the cheek. The words are not so much ‘There there’ but ‘You there!’. The league leader of lost travellers, Job himself, was turned around not with a hug but a challenge. After thirty-seven chapters of pain, heart-ache, advice and struggle, God speaks. The voice comes out of a storm and challenges Job to “Brace yourself as a man” because “I will question you and you will answer me”. There follow four chapters of sustained and exhilarating challenge which strips Job of all pretence and reminds him in no uncertain terms that God is God and Job is not. You would think it would crush Job but it is the beginning of the way back and many a traveller has come to Job 38 and found it to be the very strong medicine that they need. Maybe you will find this is all you need.
For others you may need a similar but softer question. Like Elijah you find yourself in strange circumstances and the voice of God invites you to reflect “What are you doing here?” The sequence of events surrounding the question involves God giving Elijah rest because he is exhausted, food because he is hungry, and companionship because he thought he was alone. The companionship comes in the form of one person, Elisha, and seven thousand others who have not given up either.
Somewhere between the two sits Jonah, sulking, and the Lord askshim “Have you any right to be angry?” and of course he does not.
Peter, on the other hand, needs no rebuke. After denying his Lord he already feels rebuked. So Jesus looks a look of love, gives Peter a message of hope via the women, and then restores him by a charcoal fire.
So it is clear that the route back involves God dealing with you as an individual. It is not some pre-packed, impersonal, off-the-peg solution that you need. It has to be made to measure. Being otherwise would only irritate and would add to the sense of low worth.
From the Lord’s Prayer and the children of Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness we know that God supplies needs on the day, for the day. So on the day that your daily bread needs a map home baked into the dough it will be there. Not too late, but irritatingly not too early either. God, it seems, is also interested in not wasting the learning which comes to our souls during the struggle.
This brings us to another theme. People who have lost their way and found it again are usually stronger for the experience. Scarred, wounded or limping you may be, but stronger, wiser and deeper you would also be. Only seven weeks or so after denying Jesus Peter stands up full of courage rather than fear – the defeat prepared the way.
God’s repertoire seems to include the ordinary and the supernatural. Sometimes a servant girl will say something which terrifies us as it did for Peter, but for Naaman a servant invited him to trust. Sometimes the food is supplied by a friend at midnight, sometimes God throws it down from the sky.
I don’t know how you will find your way back except that it will not be the same way that I will. Again it will be different to someone else’s. It may be a challenge, a question, a detour, a re-trace, a look of love or supplies from the sky. I don’t know which but I do know that God is God and you and I are not.
Job 38
1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said:
2 “Who is this that darkens my counsel
with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone-
7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
10 when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?
12 “Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
13 that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
14 The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
its features stand out like those of a garment.
15 The wicked are denied their light,
and their upraised arm is broken.
16 “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
17 Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death ?
18 Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.
19 “What is the way to the abode of light?
And where does darkness reside?
20 Can you take them to their places?
Do you know the paths to their dwellings?
21 Surely you know, for you were already born!
You have lived so many years!
22 “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,
23 which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?
24 What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,
or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?
25 Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,
26 to water a land where no man lives,
a desert with no one in it,
27 to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?
28 Does the rain have a father?
Who fathers the drops of dew?
29 From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
30 when the waters become hard as stone,
when the surface of the deep is frozen?
31 “Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?
Can you loose the cords of Orion?
32 Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
33 Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?
34 “Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?
35 Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?
36 Who endowed the heart with wisdom
or gave understanding to the mind ?
37 Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?
Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens
38 when the dust becomes hard
and the clods of earth stick together?
39 “Do you hunt the prey for the lioness
and satisfy the hunger of the lions
40 when they crouch in their dens
or lie in wait in a thicket?
41 Who provides food for the raven
when its young cry out to God
and wander about for lack of food?
Psalm 42: 3-5
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while men say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go with the multitude,
leading the procession to the house of God,
with shouts of joy and thanksgiving
among the festive throng.
5 Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
I Kings 19: 3-9
3 Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 4 while he himself went a day’s journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” 5 Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.
All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” 6 He looked around, and there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.
7 The angel of the LORD came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” 8 So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. 9 There he went into a cave and spent the night.
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Geoff Shattock
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