A story of a man who was a long way from home, during the Depression in Australia

This is one of my Dad's stories.  He spent most of his life at Eugowra in the Central West of NSW in Australia.   He left school when he was 13 to save the farm from foreclosure during the Depression, so his Education was a bit scant, but he had a flair for stories....

"This epic concerns and American Negro; who appeared in Eugowra out of the blue, as it’s said. He was a big man;  His name was Harry Esperance, and he'd come from the Deep South in America. If you want proof of his name, have a look in the Presbyterian Church in Eugowra. His name is on one of the chairs near the altar.

He was a decided asset to our little village because he set up his living quarters in what had been the picture theatre;  what was the Imperial theatre.  Built in 1927, it was no sooner completed than it was burnt to the ground. Then rebuilt. A supermarket now occupies what was the Imperial theatre. The old open air picture show building ultimately became the shire depot - after black Harry was laid to rest in the local cemetery.

Black Harry got busy to set up a market garden on the block I once owned. On North St. The house on that block was destroyed by a flood on 18^th May 1950. That date I vividly remember. More of that later; it’s a tale all to itself. Harry got going on the open ground between that house and the old open air pictures premises. He had two green thumbs; the vegetables fairly streamed of that land. People went to him to buy. What Harry got up to was to haul his produce around the district in a covered wagonette. Which, same, today are exhibits in rural museums. It is a four wheel conveyance, usually hauled by a half draught horse. In a pair of shanks. Like on a sulky. Sometimes two horses did the haulage. In which case the wagonette was equipped with a pole; with a horse each side if it. The upper part of it was covered by a canopy, made from heavy canvas, held in shape by a frame of wood. The front part had a bench seat on it, that would seat two. The canvas canopy projected out over that seat. I can vividly remember that wagonette coming into Prospect, apparently with no driver in it. Until it got fairly near. Then a bit of white would be visible. Harry’s teeth showing in a grin like a split in a chaff bag. He, at a distance, was totally invisible against the dark interior of that covered-in conveyance. And, to borrow a line from that old southern, when he arrived he was welcomed hearty. He didn’t get chicken and wine; he got tea and cakes. And sold a lot of what he had for sale. Vegetables.

The annual visit of the circus duly came around. We missed Harry; until the populace started to take their seats. We soon found Black Harry. At that time, the travelling circus shows had their own brass band. No such thing as “canned” music then. Circus hands were expected to be able to ‘double in brass’,  as well as set up the Big Top. A lot of them could. Harry was going for his life on a big brass band instrument, half his size. Playing the paying guests to their seats. Even now, every time I hear the Destiny waltz, I can see Black Harry putting his very soul into that beautiful old waltz. Likewise, The Missouri waltz brings back memories of that man. He never told us about his ability to play those instruments. What we did find out about that man was that he’d been a seaman in the American merchant marine. Also had been a circus hand who could double in brass. Hence his appearance in that circus band. The reason he settled in our little village was his age. He was too old to be a seaman. And the rough life of a circus hand was then beyond him. Because, then, in the depression, there was no such thing as social service. So Harry got himself 224 miles away from the water front. To become a very useful member of our little bush community. We eventually forgot his coal black skin. He was very much respected. And in due course was buried in our cemetery."

John 16:13-15; thoughts on the Holy Spirit.

There is so much to say about the Holy Spirit, let me just think about 2:   firstly, the Spirit will always point us to the Father and the Son. Also, the Spirit will lead us to the truth about God.

These are the words of Jesus:

16:13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

16:14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

16:15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

The Spirit declares the very heart of the Father to us. As the verses in John say, “all that the father has is mine and I will declare it to you.

The Spirit actually shares God’s very divinity with us.  I’m wondering who is your favourite actor?  I’m a bit of a generation behind my baby boomer peers I think, because I’m a big fan of Jimmy Stewart and Glenn Ford…. Meryl Streep is also a favourite.  Imagine if your favourite actor called you up every week just for a chat;  just to get to know you and vise versa; be a bit hard for Jimmy and Glenn because they are now in that great movie set in the sky…… But the idea of God with us, is us getting to know God;  God sharing his very self with us.  In a nutshell, the Holy Spirit is God’s personality.  He is the means by which we become like God in character.  He’s the essence of holiness. This is sanctification – becoming holy.  We become more and more like God’s character, through the resident, gentle personality of the spirit’. The HS imparts God’s divine persona to us through the fruit of the Spirit – love joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.

The fruit are all personality and character traits.  When the HS lives in us, all these lovely things become part of our personalities too.  I find this astonishing! These attributes transcend our circumstances and remain with us no matter what happens throughout our lives.

I have a pen pal in England.  She lives in Market Deeping in Lincolnshire in the East Midlands of the UK. She told me once of a visit she made to Ely Cathedral.  This is a huge worship space in Cambridgeshire some 163m long and 21 m wide.  It’s called the “ship of the fens” because it stands so tall in the surrounding flat countryside. 

My friend’s visit occurred on a day when a huge storm hit.  The wind was wild, driving the rain sideways.  She battled her way from the car to the Cathedral as the elements crashed and raged.

But, she said that once she was inside the Cathedral, up in the main part, all was still.  There was a single candle, up on the altar and it burned without a flicker. I want you to imagine now that you are walking into this huge building.  (picture). You are not part of a tourist or worshiping group;  you are alone, and you’ve had a blazing row with someone in your family.

As you approach the Cathedral, it stands like a great monolith; grey and lofty amongst it’s surroundings.

You walk inside, your body has been buffeted by the elements;  the distress of the argument is still fresh and the drive through the terrible weather has left you stressed and frazzled.  But as you walk up the nave, the great sense of space and stillness enclose about you and you feel your anxiety subside a little.   It seems like time itself knows a different, less frantic pace inside this vaulted cavern.  You look up into the roof space and let your eyes adjust to the different light there.  You look up at each stained glass window in turn;  the light is transformed through this aged glass, to a muted, gentle candescence, not so much less significant, as changed and more impressive somehow. Outside, you know the storm is still throwing itself at this ancient place but the candle on the altar burns serene and untroubled by it.

You walk to a seat on the outside aisle.  You sit there, your heart still pounding, but your agitation powerless and feeble now, defeated by the atmosphere of the place; absorbed and muffled.  You can feel it held at bay, like a raised fist held back by some unseen hand. You sit there, suspended serenely now in the repose of this place.  The candles burn without a flicker;  there is just the silence and the now-calm rhythm of your own breathing.

This is what living with the supremacy of the Holy Spirit is like.

Sometimes our journey takes us through sunny countryside with gentle meanderings and peaceful stopovers;  sometimes we encounter terrible storms where thunder and lightning shatter our senses and driving wind and rain knock us off course.   The HS is like this Cathedral space; it encloses us and it keeps us centred on God;  stilled and grounded in the fiercest of our life’s storms, so that the inner candle of our soul still burns clear and unflinching.  God is the constant in all our changes – an absolutely unbroken, immovable, unquenchable Being.  So, it doesn’t matter what storms we encounter, we can be kept secure in love, joy, peace patience, kindness goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

So, if we think of these attributes being with us in our darkest moments, we will still have love even when people treat us badly, and we can respond with love, the way the Bible teaches;  when we face some kind of temptation, we have access, through the Spirit to self-control so we can stay away from those evils which might tempt our appetites. When we suffer terrible loss, we can still have joy, even in the face of tragedy because the divinity of God’s personality can transcend our earthly experiences. We can have peace in the face of worry;  patience in times of illness, etc. Astonishing. We worship an astonishing God, who shares the truth about himself with us.

Windmills and other stuff

I did Pastoral Care at my local hospital recently. There is a team of us, almost exclusively Christian people, from most of the mainstream churches,  who visit people in hospital, from a list compiled by the Hospital Chaplain.  The patients must first have consented to a visit, when they filled out the admission paperwork. I always come away feeling glad to have mingled with all sorts of people.

Some are very ill, like the little girl receiving Chemo;  some are ill from lifestyle choices;  some are in for “repairs”, and some are just sick from various ailments, like the man who said he had gout.  He told me he was going home that day and suggested that I might like to take care of him at home.  Hmmm… the thought of doing what he had in mind, with a 200 kg sleaze was strangely unappealing. And I wanted to say, as Julia Roberts did, sarcastically, to the book thief who tries to chat her up in the movie Notting Hill.  “thanks… but ….. No”.  Instead,  I remained doggedly polite and told him that unfortunately I could only offer pastoral care.

One couple sat by their child’s bedside with a sort of closed detachment and it wasn't because their child was very ill – he was about to be discharged. I got the feeling this was their usual state. They were neither hostile nor pleased. They were absolutely unsmiling and the woman gave one-syllable answers to my polite attempts at conversation. When I said I was part of the Pastoral Care team, I don’t think they knew what that was.  They were, what would be described in the middle class world as “rough”, from a low income area, and the woman in particular, seemed to have a sort of brutish nonchalance about her.

I am still very much learning how to  enter only as far into someone’s personal arena, as they are comfortable with. I never want to intrude or push them to a place they don’t want to go.  I am learning how to gently stand on the barrier of their world and wait to be trusted enough to be allowed a step further.  So I stayed outside their wariness and moved on. I got the impression that this brief encounter with someone whose outlook on life held a large cavern of spiritual awareness, was as close a spiritual encounter as they had ever had. Perhaps for a brief moment the breath of God wafted near;  for them I think it was a completely unknown arena – they lived their lives completely on the physical plane – and it doesn’t do to make them step into that other place, unless invited.

Another old gent told me he had, among other things, mended windmills for a living.  He was, in fact, what’s known as “a jack of all trades” and I always have a sneaking respect for people like this.  I loved the thought of such a practical and wind-powered (yay!) mechanism being expertly repaired, out in the stubbled paddocks with the still, hot breath of the bush all around;  the caw of the crows and the bleat of the sheep, the only sounds.  Sometimes the paddocks would flaunt the exquisite green of newly emerged grain crops , and sometimes the clack and rattle of the giant harvester would be tracking it’s way through wheat and canola. I know I’m romanticising it – it would actually have been very hard work, climbing up and down the windmill and working with metal which would be so cold in winter and so hot in summer.  But I’m sure there were times he would stop and just absorb the stillness;  I know I would.

And at the end of my visiting, I got a coffee at a nearby coffee place;  it's well frequented by all the surrounding medical community, and I was bemused by the variety of people jostling for space in the tiny café – the young nurse in navy pants and top getting coffees for a few others on the ward;  the huddle of Very Important Young Doctors, their stethoscope badges of recognition slung casually around their necks.

And the group of about 6 young tradies from the new hospital work-site, all getting their smoko food.  As I walked out they had adjourned to a table outside where they joked and jostled like school kids – well… they were, after all, not much more than that.  It would never have happened even a few years ago – this mixing of so very different work groups – tradies and doctors sharing the same eatery.  Love that.

As I took my coffee away, I ran into a lady from my church, and her husband, who were seated outside.  She is a very regular attender but he never comes and I hadn't met him before.  After a few minutes my friend mentioned that she wouldn't be at church on Sunday because she had was having a health issue.  He quipped “I’m sure God won’t mind”. I’m also sure He won’t mind. Her husband added that some people who go to church are not very nice people.  I had to agree with him there too. (And I couldn't help noticing how quickly the conversation took a spiritual turn, even though I’d not initiated it;  so different from the other couple who had looked at me with such a blank and disengaged stare).

Some of the nastiest, most cowardly people I've ever met have been regular churchgoers. It could be the reason that most people don’t go anymore – because some time in the past they have been bruised by just such a person. Shame, that.

I try and focus on the nice ones – and they are by far and away still in the majority – the ones who have allowed the indwelling Christ to sweeten their souls and give them a love which shows itself in how they treat others.

I leave the other kind to God, hoping one day the penny will drop and they will realize Christianity is never so lifeless as when it’s just a set of rules and “bible-based head knowledge”. People who live like that can never have their characters refined and sweetened because they have never connected their souls to the living Christ. It’s about releasing all we are to the mercy and grace of God, through Christ and the Holy Spirit, so we grow more and more like him;  rich with the same love and grace.

Lamentations 3:22

I talked recently with a woman I’d worked with previously, but whom I hadn't seen for years since I’d left the Institution we both worked for.  She still worked there and was interested in what I’d been doing since leaving (as was I interested to hear from her).

She knew I’d been bullied at this place, and she knew my son had died in the middle of it all.

She was very compassionate and really listened to my sad tale of how I’d had to resign because 

I couldn't go back to such a workplace, with the added burden of grief I was carrying.

Still, she entreated me “But you should have fought back Susan;  you should have stood up for yourself”.

But I knew I couldn't. I knew it at the time, and I know it now. 

As we talked though, I became conscious of really wanting to leave the angst of the bullying, behind.  There was so much anxiety at the time;  so much resentment of the injustice of it.

But I really felt that, not only did I not want to go back there now, in my head, but that my heart (at least as far as the bullying was concerned) was healed and I could no longer “feel” the anger, helplessness anxiety and betrayal which I’d faced, alone, back then. 

I was conscious of wanting to leave it where it rested – in the past. There was no grudge carefully nursed;  no path of bitterness wreaking havoc through my peace of mind.

I think God has healed me.  He truly does enable us to overcome our circumstances.

God can really transform us with His love and compassion – as long as we keep giving over the rubbish stuff to Him. ‘Consumed” is a terrible word when it’s applied to those negative reactions which threaten our spiritual and emotional well-being – you can’t be close to God when you are consumed by anger or bitterness or self-pity.  When these things hold power over you, God presence is subsumed by them.

But having said that, if you've been hurt or wronged very badly by someone, you can’t just put it away, without working through what happened and what you feel.  Those powerfully tenacious emotions like anger and rancour don’t give up without a fight! 

But they have to be dealt with or they fester and grow.  Pretending you don’t feel them doesn't disable them either.

But God, through His transforming presence and mercy, can take them from our struggling, burdened souls and we are not consumed by them. We keep giving them up to His redemptive power and He keeps tempering them, dissolving them until their power over us is gone.

Rather, the negative destructive forces are themselves transformed in us, by God’s astonishing power to work evil things to our good, and the very circumstances and hurts which threaten to consume us, give us empathy for others who have been similarly hurt and diminished. Not only that, but this grace enables us to pray for those who have hurt us, and when this point is reached, God’s power is set to work to redeem and heal the other also.

God’s power knows no bounds when it is released by our obedient application of His precepts in our lives, even in the face of pain and suffering.

This promise of grace holds us in dignified and ever-renewing strength – that of allowing God to heal and transform us, so that we are never consumed by anything which happens to us in this life.

Amazing.

a sermon on Isaiah 58:9b-14

The book of Isaiah is a fascinating text. Like the view from the top of The Rock, it’s best taken as a whole vista, not just little snippets of verses out of context.  The basic theme of Isaiah is one of falling away from God and taking up idols; of threat of judgement, of offered redemption, and of the blessings which will flow from acceptance of God’s mercy. It’s a picture of God never turning his back on his people even though they grieve his heart with their sin. The whole book is a pointer to the coming of Jesus and his offer of redemption for us at the cross.  There’s this pattern of demolition and reconstruction;  of judgment and salvation.   Then in the last chapters of the book, there’s a hopeful picture of the new Jerusalem which has resonance with heaven for us.

Now, when I said that the book is best taken whole, I was just showing off, so you’d know that I did actually have a scant knowledge of the book, and I want to actually just speak on a one verse which jumped out at me when I read it. Verse 11 says this:  “And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail”.  

I watched a documentary recently about a young Canadian man, Robert Bogucki who went on a journey into the Great Sandy Desert to try and find God.  (Incidentally, the Great Sandy Desert is the one in north west  Western Australia, inland from Broome.  It’s roughly the same size as Japan, and it’s surrounded by other deserts). He wanted to fast in the wilderness, like Jesus. He set out on a bicycle with a few belongings and a bible.  But as he got further and further into the desert, the bike was useless in the unrelenting landscape and he discarded it and continued on foot.  Eventually, of courses, he became lost and in grave peril. When his bike and belongings were found, a search was launched using police and aboriginal trackers.  But he wasn’t found. His father eventually came over here with his own search team and found his son, alive, but only just. He’d been 6 weeks without food and 12 days without water and had lost 30 kilos.  The documentary describes how he kept finding water in the most inhospitable of places;  he would dig into the sand to find water seeping up, or he would follow birds which led to waterholes, and he was able to survive.

Most of us would not seek God in such an extreme manner. But all of us encounter times of adversity when we seem to be in a spiritual desert. We’ve all had times when God seems far away and nothing we do seems to bring Him closer. We’ve all had times when the circumstances of our lives are difficult and hard to live through.  But take heart, these times are essential to us finding God, in a way we never could, if all our time was spent in watered and fertile comfort.  Just as Robert  found water in the driest place on earth, not only can we find God, but we can be as these verses in Isaiah describe;  like a watered garden;  strong, resilient, satisfied, contented, a spring whose waters do not fail.  We can be like this, because this is what Jesus becomes to us in times of adversity.

How can this be?  Let’s look at the preceding verses.  There’s a kind of spiritual physics here;  when you do this, there is a certain outcome.  The whole chapter is a discourse on what true fasting is.  It’s not just going without food;  it’s looking after those less fortunate;  it’s relieving those who are oppressed;  it’s giving food to the hungry.  When we do these things, we are promised God’s favour.  Listen to these lovely verses again;  “Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house;  when you see the naked, to cover him … Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily;  your righteousness shall go before you;  the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.  Then you shall call and the Lord will answer. If you pour yourself out for the hungry then shall your light rise in the darkness”.  This is not just a set of rules though.  You do this, and you get what you want;  you follow the rules and God blesses you.  These things are not just a set of rules and regulations;  they are God’s precepts.  So I think this says that even in the midst of our own trouble, when we continue to live according to God’s precepts, we find God.  Our living this way, becomes a seeking of God and he will never let us go unsatisfied.  Rather, he uses these difficult times, to weed out the dross of our lives;  There is a saying from Arabia;  “too much sun makes a desert”.  It’s true.  If our lives were all comfort and ease, our souls would become cluttered with worldly stuff.   As life still thrives against the odds in desert places, so God’s life becomes a source of refreshment and vitality and streams in dry places, when we continue to trust him.  He becomes a lifeline, like water found in a dry creek bed.  In the natural world, creatures adapt to living in the desert.  One of the inhabitants of the desert, is a tiny lizard, which can survive when the temperature on the sand reaches well over 50 degrees C.  It does so by lifting it’s body up away from the burning sand so that it’s vital organs are kept cooler.  So, in parched difficult times, the stuff we don’t need (like resentment anger and selfishness) are dropped (with God’s help).  In times of difficulty, for example, when someone faces a life threatening illness or loses a loved one, the importance of say, getting back at someone for some slight, seems less important than it did before;  we simply don’t have the energy for it anymore because we see how petty it is.  We can move past it more easily, because in the face of our own, or a loved one’s impending death, it simply isn’t important any more. The harsh light of desert experience can shine a refining light into our hearts.

There is so much imagery in the Bible about trees.  I won’t mention them all, but one of one of my favourites is from Psalm 1, vse 3…. Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord;  he is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields it’s fruit in its season and it’s leaf does not wither.  There is a season for everything going well; but there comes a time to most people when things perplex and trouble us.  Whatever our circumstances, when we keep our lives anchored in God’s word and in seeking him, then we are like the image of this tree.  We won’t wither and we’ll bear fruit when it’s time.  When I first moved into my present house, there was a lovely standard weeping cherry in the amongst a garden with other plants, but over the ensuing years of drought, it didn’t really do well.  As each season passed, more and more of it died off.  Thinking I would do it a favour, I installed the polypipe dripper system in the whole garden.  It seemed to make no difference and I finally decided I’d pull it out and plant another one. 

The older I get, the more I think that adversity and suffering are God’s hand as much as when everything is going well, and as much as the physical and fiscal things he gives us.  He is the Lord God, and he doesn’t just go around mopping up after the evil one’s schemes.  He is always sovereign. 

It’s in the desert where our true relationship with God is formed.   And Like Robert in the Great Sandy, we become focussed on the really important things which ensure our spiritual survival.  I think this is the answer to the great “why” of bad stuff happening to us.  Have you been through a hard rocky experience lately?  Take heart, God is at the centre of adversity;  he may not have brought it, but he has allowed it;  God made the great Sandy Desert as well as the mighty Murrumbidgee and he has promised us his presence whether we are in the drought of the one, or the watered places of the other (I must say here how lovely it is to see the Bidgee with lots of water between it’s banks at the moment;  haven’t seen that for a while).

We can become so strong spiritually when we endure the desert of adversity or pain, or uncertainty or suffering.  We can become spiritually “well watered”, even though our outward circumstances seem to be the opposite.  Be aware though, that this may not become evident at the time.  When we are stuck in the parched places, the watered garden seems a long way off.   

And the lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places.

Let’s just get back to the book of Isaiah for a moment. It’s set in the time of the exile of the Israelites from their promised land;  God warns them to stop rebelling and repent; he uses their enemies Assyria to chastise them;  then He uses Babylon to take them out of their land;  they are refugees. Then God uses Cyrus of Persia to set them free and take them home. We can see how God uses their adverse circumstances and their rebellion to bring about their eventual spiritual good;  he brings them back into the fold of his favour.  He never lets them stay in their desert of disobedience but always has their spiritual well-being in mind.  And so it is with us.  He uses all the times of our lives to bring us closer to him.  And that’s a good thing, even if at the time, it seems so difficult to live through.

  Amen

I hate it when the car breaks down

The car still isn’t fixed.  It broke down on Monday on the way to work and I had to get towed.  Last week it was the engine housing;  this week it’s the computer.

I got stressed when it broke down.  I think my blood pressure went way up – my heart pounded and I had a sort of pain in my chest.  It’s a throwback to breakdowns passed, especially the one when I broke down 3 times in the one journey, with the same problem, on lonely roads, with the kids, night descending, and costing hundreds and hundreds of dollars, which I didn’t really have.  It was a time in my life, year after year, when everything, big and small, went wrong.

Any wonder that when I break down, the anguish of it comes back a bit. I still carry a sort of resentment towards God for all those dark years, when nobody helped; nobody understood, nobody helped me fight my corner.  All God seemed to do was allow more bad things. 

I know His purpose was to make me rely on Him. He let the devil trick and savage me all through those years.  It was like a trek off into the wilds;  so much darkness; so much despair;  so much conflict in every arena of my life. All to a backdrop of grinding hard work frugal living.

Now, here I am still holding the banner of the risen Christ;  still living by the precepts of the  Suffering One.  I’m still on the treadmill of low income and frugal living, with loneliness as my companion.  It’s just how it is.

I guess I know the nature of Christ and what it means to be a Christian, which is a little more founded in reality than those cardboard cut-outs who cry into my puzzled face “I’m off to Paris!  Isn’t God wonderful!”.  (pukeness-making I reckon).

I know what it is to live in the Spirit and soar with the Eagle (spiritually), with the light of God on my back.  I understand that the light and the soaring are perhaps as tangible and real, when I’m trudging through mud, as it is when I’m in a sunny meadow.  The Spirit and the light are the same whatever my circumstances.

The only thing that stops me soaring is that I’m still a frail human being and have become used to the easier path, when I’m not struggling with the pain of divorce or the loss of a son, or even the car breaking down.  I’m like everyone else – I don’t want to have my faith tested with suffering and loss.  It’s easy-peasy being a banner-bearer when nothing much goes wrong. The fact that it has been tested with these things, only makes me more susceptible to little things going wrong. 

To be honest, I don’t know why I’m still on the treadmill of working when I’d rather give up, and the alone-ness gets to me at times.  So when the car broke down the second time, it triggers the puzzled bewilderment which is still a part of me, and I wonder again, just what on earth was the purpose of all the designed and designated suffering?

But I don’t have the energy to rail against it anymore. I’ve resigned myself that this is God’s lot for me now until I reach “Aslan’s country”;  heaven;  the real Life for which this life has been a preparation.

I just hope God hasn’t got any more bloody awful surprised in store.  If He can’t allow good things (and when I’m in my right mind, I know I have many of those), I wish He’d keep the bad to himself.  I do SO get sick of being changed from glory to bloody glory!

I do get angry with God sometimes. But I SO don’t want to “do” anger either, and being thankful is a way to counter anger.  Anger is exhausting, futile, defeating of joy, hard going, depressing and affects no-one except me.

Sometimes too, God seems silent.  He never answers prayers I ask for myself – even when I was at my wit’s end (many times).  It’s the cost of being an Intercessor for others.

Sometimes He seems silent;  the great Silence from Him who supposedly craves our fellowship. Sometimes, I feel like I’m slowly falling out of love with God. I am tired of making the effort, when I so obviously, so fully misunderstand His ways and purposes.  Or, rather, I keep reverting back, like a blueprint I can’t erase, of a Providential, caring Father-figure God.  I expect Him to look out for me;  to be on my side, stick up for me, provide a little help when life robs me of the good crop I’ve sowed.  But that never seems to happen (or when I’m …. Admitting it now…. Depressed…. That’s how it seems)

Instead, when I am thankful to Him for all the positives of some loss He’s allowed, He allows more loss; just to be sure I have been tested enough.  And really, even though I have this idea in my head of a Providential God, what’s actually in my emotional, spiritual self is this silent, testing, hard-hearted God who looks away at my distress, who looked away at the struggle and suffering of Christ on the cross.

So I’m left with this suffering Jesus who must understand what it’s like to be rejected and un-helped by Father God.  I know too, that if I turn away and leave God out of my life, I am unhappy and left exposed, without shields or protection, to the demons of depression, self-pity, anger and despair. (shudder).

So, up I go again, to turn to the light of the “looking-away God” and the unearthly, unfathomable, joyous song of the Sprit, and to the suffering, bewildered, anguished figure on the cross, who said “why have you forsaken me God?”.

And I understand that. And I think “this is the narrow door”

And I go through it again.

After all, God doesn't really promise that nothing bad will happen.

He just promises an unending supply of hope, strength, courage and even joy, to cope with it all.

He will never leave us, or forsake us, actually  The forsaking is not an earthly, tangible, riches, comfort arena. 

It’s a spiritual arena;  He will never leave us to battle our demons;  our struggles;  our doubts, alone. He will never throw us into a spiritual arena which we cannot win over and emerge triumphant and whole.

I just wish I could get that bit through my head. 

Self Esteem... a different approach

Many of you will be familiar with the traditional folk song “There is a ship”.  One of the verses goes like this:  There is a ship, and it sails the sea, it’s loaded deep, as deep can be;  but not as deep as the love I’m in;  I know not if I sink or swim”. 

There have been many times in my life, when I have been so desperate, so downcast, so despairing, that I didn’t know if I was sinking or swimming.  In fact, there have been years on end in my life, when I was only just keeping my head above water, in every sense of the word;  emotional, physical, spiritual and mental. And I want to tell you, very briefly, how I emerged from this dungeon into the sunlight of the best self-esteem I’ve had in my life.

A big cause of all this angst was my marriage breakdown.  God has created us all with a unique “self” – a blueprint of who we are, and it’s one of the most precious things we are given.  Lots of things build on that blueprint – life experience, parents, friends, even place.  To have that crushed and manipulated and denied, is a terrible thing.  This is what my husband tried to do to me over many years. He did it by alternate, deliberate episodes of carefully crafted apparent care, thoughtfulness and love, then terrible vengeance, deliberate hurting, rejection and dominating criticism. This emotional blackmail is a terrible form of control and destruction. It leaves the victim anxious, demoralized, bewildered. In those final, terrible days, before he left, there was only a fragment of my self left.  My ex husband took it, trampled on it and walked away.  It left a great hole in my inner being which was spent, empty, unrequited;  a wasteland of broken reeds; a mourning which was unsoothed and uncomforted. But I don’t want to dwell on that. To be fair to him, I don’t think he realized he was doing it.  He was acting out his own terrible form of selfish instability and rebellion.  I never understood why he felt he had to treat me in this way, or even more, why he went on to treat our children in this way too. I don’t care any more;  it’s no longer important.  But when he found, after 17 years of marriage, that he  couldn’t be the complete keeper of my soul, mind and spirit, he threw me away. After all that, one of the last things he said to be was “you were never good enough”.  Yet, here I am today stronger, self-reliant and with a much larger, more defined and healthier self esteem than I’ve ever had.  How can that be? So after all that rejection and anguish, how can I possibly stand here and tell you about self-esteem? There are many paths to self-esteem;  indeed self-esteem is a multi-layered thing, existing in our personal thoughts about ourselves, our ability to relate to people and our ability to perform our jobs. It’s influenced by many things, not the least of which is our experience in childhood, especially from our parents.

We tend to think these days that self esteem is given by how we look, the kind of job we do, the sort of car we drive, our place in the community, and especially by how much money we have.  The more of all these we have, the better we should feel about ourselves.  Thus says the media, the motivation gurus, our  society, even our friends.  

Here I am;  someone with none of the generally accepted requirements for self-esteem.  I have no status (in fact, I have what I call anti-status, because I’m a single parent).  I perform an essential but mind-numbingly ordinary job; I have no wealth;  I drive a fairly  old car and up to a few years ago, I lived in a fibro house.  In the world’s eyes, I have failed at marriage.  I should feel bad about myself.   But still, despite these things, there has been this rising of self-worth, like a clear calm stream; an awareness of true self-worth, falling on my battered senses, with the cadence of a beautiful and serene melody.

How can it be that my sense of worth increased, rather than decreased? Let me share with you just a few things I’ve learned:  And we could spend ages on this topic but let me give you just two.

1 Bring all that happens to you, to the cross of Jesus. I had to try and understand why it was that this man could treat me like a doormat.  It was not a pleasant process and it took years of prayer and pondering and ploughing through my life, my attitudes, my Christian beliefs. I knew I had lots of very good qualities in my character, but I also learned how vulnerable I was to people who would bully and hurt me.  To be absolutely honest, one aspect of the Christian ethic, (ie wives should be submissive to their husbands) if taken the wrong way, can breed a terrible sort of man, and they will always be drawn to a woman who takes the “treat others better than yourself” verses more to heart. But I don’t want to dwell on these verses, but rather on our working with God, to  achieve all that he wants for us and for his glory.

What is important is to be honest before God, and bring him all that’s happened to us, and ask him to help us cope with it.  Some people find this difficult and perhaps if we didn’t have times of suffering, we would never be forced to look deep into our own hearts and discover all the imperfections there.  People who are not self-aware are the worst kind of selfish people.  They deny their faults and blunder through life, hurting anyone who gets in their way.  Jesus loves us no matter what faults we have, and when we become aware of them, he is able to heal us.  One pitfall of examining ourselves is that we can get stuck in it and become too introspective and become overwhelmed with what’s happened to us.  If you only look at this aspect, you’ll trudge down the steps of self pity and it will become harder to trudge back up again into the light of healing.  You need to be kind to yourself but not self-indulgent.  You have to be willing to get to know yourself, warts and all, and in the presence of God, allow him to begin a healing process. God’s strength is made perfect in weakness.  Listen to 2 Cor 12:9-10. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2  Make God’s precepts your own value system and stick to them, no matter how others treat you. The getting of true self-esteem involves more than just pampering ourselves, and stroking our own ego;  it has nothing to do with positive self-talk (although that has it’s place);  it has nothing to do with retail therapy;  it has nothing to do with power over others;  it has nothing to do with the house we live in or our address.  It has nothing to do with “things” at all. Rather, it requires a personal resolve to stay true to our own value system, when it would be easier to cop out and behave with no personal integrity.  It requires digging deep into who we are, building a set of values, and living according to those values.  It requires conviction, courage and tenacity to stay true to our value system, when life’s unkind face would have us compromise and behave less gallantly. 

When we resolve to face the ravages of life with goodwill and a strong desire to do the right thing, as dictated by our own value system;  When we behave with personal integrity despite the injustices, the hardships, the terrible jostling of our souls;  when we  endeavour and endure with our own set of ideals when it would be far easier to give in and become lesser people,  we reap the reward of a quiet, growing confidence that we matter, that we can achieve; that we are people  who can face some of the storms of life and emerge stronger. We like who we are.  We have earned our own respect. This is why God commands us to live this way.  Priceless treasure.

For the Christian, this goes against all the worldly advice about self esteem.  Bless those who curse you.  Forgive those who wronged you.  Pray for those who spitefully use you.  Can you imagine the corporate world giving this advice to their people?  But, when we do this, we are changed;  we learn to value what’s happened to us less, but value ourselves more. Where’s the sermon I did about as we do God’s precepts we are changed? 

The other less travelled path to self esteem is the old fashioned notion of living with regard to how we treat others.  This goes against all the modern preaching about demanding MY rights, pursuing MY dream, protecting MY interests, grabbing as much money and status for MYSELF as I possibly can.  Could it be that this kind of thing actually encourages bad self-esteem?  Depression, which has connections to self-esteem, is almost to epidemic proportions in this country.  Could it be that we’ve lost sight of a nobler belief system which values how we treat others and nurtures  our own personal self respect at the same time?

What if the very fabric of our self-esteem has nothing to do with money or class?  I mean the very deep-down blueprint of what makes us who we are and how we value ourselves.  Money, status, power;  these are outward things, imposed or gained, or given or worked for, or even taken.  These are open to decay by shifting fortune, illness, chance even.  These things… status and power are so closely linked to wealth.  And wealth is such a fickle, deceitful thing.  Wealth is fool’s gold.

What if true self-esteem grows out of something less tangible, yet more within our control?  We can choose our own value system;  we can choose to follow it.  It’s the following of it when it would be easier not to, which ploughs the ground of our character, and produces a great crop of the beautiful flowers of self-value.  For me, there will always be a little wasteland of barren ground inside me, which is my divorce and other painful things. We all have these patches of wasteland inside us. But there is also a verdant garden of these beautiful flowers, and they will always self-seed, as long as I continue to water them with the living out of my personal value system. 

This holding on to God and His precepts in times when the world wants to kick our heads, is what makes us strong;  it’s like a quiet, life-changing journey… I call it a low miracle.  God is able to take something so negative and so destructive and turn it into an unbreakable confidence in His power;  a sense of self which is not selfish, but whole and  strong and nourished;  it’s this kind of self esteem which can put others’ needs first, without feeling down trodden;  it can develop healthy relationships with others because it’s not super sensitive to criticism.  It can assert it’s right to be treated properly, without feeling guilty.  It doesn’t come from asserting our rights, it comes from living out God’s precepts in the face of what others do to us. 

If someone says to us “you were never good enough”, what would God have us do?  The easy answer is hate that person and use every means available, even our children, to get back at that person.  It’s would be very easy to plunge into recrimination and self justification.  But what does God bid us do?  The answer is one of the hardest things you’ll ever be asked to do.  It’s Bless those who curse you and spitefully use you;  it’s “do not return evil for evil”, it’s “turn the other cheek” and most importantly, it’s “forgive those who’ve wronged you, as Christ as forgiven you”.  This is not easy and there will be hills and vallerys;  the road will be rough and stony, but I guearantee, when you obey God’s word in the face of what people do to hurt you or dominate you, it will be a road that leads to a new confidence, a sense of self-worth which is deep and powerful , not based on the world’s fake, skin-deep offering sof “Your’re worth it” or “it’s all about me”.