Where are you God?

I read something recently about grief which talked about the writer's experience of finding joy and peace hidden within the process of grieving. This would be a lovely testimony, except that the writer generalised their experience to all Christians. And I thought of some friends of mine and how discouraging they would find that. Because as the writer blithely described the experience of God drawing near through grief and feeling the blessing of his closeness I heard in my head the baffled cry of a Christian friend going through a terrible grief, "If I felt closer to God it would feel less pointless, but in the worst time in my life he has never seemed so far away."

I know she is not unique. I have felt that same thing. In the darkest night of my life, when I feel I have needed God's presence more than I ever have before, suddenly he has disappeared. And not for a day or two. For a month, for a year. Left in that swirling void is confusion, anger, doubt: Where has he gone? Is it my fault? Is God angry with me? Is he punishing me? Is he even there? 

It's quick and easy to diagnose the fault with the believer from the outside, not enough faith, some sin blocking the way, but in my opinion also quite wrong. I know a little something about strong emotion, and a little something about grief from a personal point of view and they have this in common, your emotions cannot be trusted. They will lie to you, and they will overwhelm you to the exclusion of any other feeling. That includes physical feelings, like hunger and tiredness, and so how much more more abstract feelings like being loved. God may feel far away simply because the overwhelming weight of your grief, pain, anger, loss holds at a distance all of the feelings you associate with his presence, joy in your salvation, supernatural peace, the sense of being loved and protected. 

But even above and beyond all this is the fact that the human brain can only tolerate so much distress without shutting down its emotions altogether. This is a blessed mercy in many ways as it allows you to get through the early stages of grief and all the things that have to be done. From the outside people will comment about how well you are dealing with it, but in reality you are sleep walking, numb, in emotional shutdown. This stage of grief can last weeks, months, years, especially if there is a need to 'carry on' or 'be strong' for others. You can't afford the luxury of feeling your pain so you shut it down, but it’s not selective. Along with pain you have to shut down all feeling.

Another common reason that God can feel distant is particularly potent for faithful Christians. It is the fact that you are angry with God. You don't want to be, you feel it is wrong to be, you ought to trust him, to submit to his will to believe in his goodness even in this, but everything in you cries out, it's wrong, it's bad, it's unfair, how could you. We are much less holy in practice than in theory. It's easy in good times to say God has a purpose for good in all things, but when confronted with the ultimate unnatural evil of death our theology can easily be swamped by feeling. 

Now this may be because we secretly have some problems in our practical theology. We may know that we are the recipients of grace but be quietly holding on to the belief that God owes us something because we are good. We may believe that God is Sovereign and Good but have not practiced trusting and dwelling in that sovereignty and good in our everyday life so we are ill equipped to face the ultimate test. There is nothing like death and despair to show up our spiritual flaws in neon lights. But even if these things and others like are present there will be an underlying anger which is entirely fitting. Because death is wrong. It is unnatural. It was never meant to be and so feelings of confusion and anger are entirely appropriate. If you don't believe me read the Psalms. Read Job. That isn't to encourage anyone to wallow in anger and feel justified, in fact for your own good you should try to move out of it as soon as possible, but it isn't wrong. 

However, we often believe that this anger is wrong, so we deny it, conceal it and don't deal with it. It sits, festering, unacknowledged. And unacknowledged anger doesn't go away. So, we have to face up to the fact that maybe God feels distant because we are angry and we want him to be distant, in fact we are keeping him at arm’s length. 

Now some will argue that surely God provides peace that passes all understanding which will penetrate through all of these layers that would keep a sense of his closeness away. And I would wag my finger at those people and remind them that context matters. That passage in Philippians 4 is about anxiety. It's about peace in uncertainty because we know that God takes care of our every need. Incidentally, not a small challenge in itself! Now I wouldn't for a second deny that God can and does often break through graciously and give supernatural experiences of peace and joy in grief and loss. But if he doesn't Philippians 4 should not be used as a stick to beat either the suffering Christian or God himself for not providing this peace. 

Now I have no wish to affirm that God may feel distant and leave Christians hopeless in their predicament. I have some encouragement to offer which I hope is sweeter than the condemnation of God or self for failing to feel joy, peace and presence in the darkness of grief.

Firstly, have a good look to see if you are angry. Don't hide it, don't pretend, if I know anything it's the damage that emotions that you refuse to look at can do to you. You don't have to nurse it but be real about it, tell God about it, ask for his help with it, tell him you don't understand why it had to happen, that death feels wrong, like a betrayal, and remember that he knows all about it. That you are talking to the God who cried out in the face of death, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Which as well as being a Messianic sign and a symbol of facing a much deeper rejection than we as Christians now experience in death, was nevertheless a real expression of feeling. 

Now my second is a re-interpretation of a phrase that has been thrown at me many times by the well-intentioned. Feelings aren't facts. Now my response to this is always to say that without feelings facts become meaningless to me. But for me I have learned that the thing to set in opposition to feelings is not facts but faith. I may not feel God is close, but I can have faith that he is. I may not feel his love, but I can have faith that it is there. I may not feel joy in my salvation but I can have faith that my salvation is real and is something that is truly, deeply, immensely good. I may not feel God is good, kind, merciful, loving, but I can choose to have faith that he is all of these. I can choose to listen to his word and affirm its truth in the face of what I feel. I may not feel that God is bringing good out of this miserable darkness but I can choose to have faith that he is. I can look at the stories of him bringing bigger and stranger blessing out of tragedy and mess and darkness and sin over and over throughout the Bible, culminating at the cross and I can believe that however I feel I can trust that he is doing this in my situation here and now. I may not feel a loved, precious child, but I can choose to believe I am one and act accordingly. 

Each strand of sorrow has a place

Within this tapestry of grace;

So through the trials I choose to say:

“Your perfect will in Your perfect way.”

 Stuart Townend and Keith Getty. 

Now none of these things may lift the darkness or make God feel any closer but they will help the pain feel less meaningless and hopefully lighten the load of frustration at God's apparent distance. And it doesn't last. The numbness fades in time and leaves deep anguish but also the potential for moments of peace, the bitterness of the loss fades a little and there is space for us to recognise God's presence which has never actually left. And ultimately as we cling in the face of our feelings to our faith in the truth we can know his promise that it will be bearing fruit, in our relationship with God, in our lives as we become equipped to help and love others better, in the church as they see us persevere through the darkness. 

And finally, we can use this experience to grow our thirst for heaven where God's presence will be the light, with us always, that never goes out, where there will be no grief, pain or sorrow to cloud or obscure our enjoyment of his love, where there will be no death, no parting or loss. 

"For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." 2 Corinth 4:17-18.

Moving a mountain

When I started this blog 6 months ago I was exhausted and terrified. Exhausted from months of sleeplessness, exhausted from the effort of appearing normal, exhausted from the unbearable pain and confusion of broken relationships and rejection I was experiencing. I was dancing on the edge of a precipice, ready to give up.


Those who had told me they loved and cared for me couldn't seem to understand what was happening to me, they were confused and upset. They couldn't relate the silent, quivering wreck with the person they had known before. I couldn't see myself, couldn't step outside the mountainous load of pain and fear I was carrying. I felt their anger, their frustration, their hurt, confusion and fear but I couldn't understand it at all.


I try not to think back too much on that time, or the times like it that have come before. It still hurts, still has the power to terrify me. I'm nervous of the approach of Easter, the temporal landmarks, Lent, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, returning to school after the Easter holiday, each event tied into memories of spiralling anguish, confusion and despair. Waiting in the cold for ambulances with weird and freaky hallucinations dancing in front of my eyes, baffling meetings, inexplicable conversations, fleeing into the night to sleep in my car, the only place left I felt safe.


These are the bad times, its rarely like that, not now, praise the Lord. I still can't reflect really on what went wrong, or who was to blame, if anyone was. Even in my current state of well-ness thinking back into that time has the power to paralyse, to drag me down back into the mire.


But one consequence of this latest dive into the dark depths was 3 words that dropped into my life out of the storm. 3 words that others have found so painful to be given, but for me have been the beginning of healing. Borderline Personality Disorder. I'm not claiming I am better, I am neither so foolish nor so bold, but I have seen that through the gospel applied to the insight that diagnosis gave the mountain of emotion has begun to move.
My friend who helps me think through things told me today that she always knew this was possible, that although there might always be a vulnerability here, there could through Christ and the gospel be change and healing for me. I used to argue. I don't anymore. I used to think my emotions would always be a stick of dynamite hanging by a thread, a battleground where I was fated to lose and lose and lose again, and could only win periods of peace by constant vigilance, discipline and self-control. But in the last 6 months I can't deny that I have experienced change I would not have believed.


When we first started working together, specifically using the BPD characteristics I firmly told my friend that I didn't believe that they could change. They were too deeply rooted, too firmly embedded in my defences. But I wanted them to change. And when I was diagnosed with BPD we learned two things which seem to have made a tremendous difference and have held the seeds of the change I have experienced.


Firstly we learned, that unusual as my behaviour was for a depressed person, it was classic for someone with BPD. The sudden, violent mood swings, the blinding intensity of emotion, the anger, the terror of rejection and abandonment, the numb emptiness and obsessive thoughts of self-harm, these were characteristics straight from the BPD playbook. So we treated it like a shopping list. The gospel speaks to all of those, my friend said, pick one and we'll start there.

Secondly and probably more profoundly we did some reading and spotted a trap we had been falling into for years. Tell someone with BPD that they need to change and they will feel judged, tell them that they are OK and they will feel unloved and misunderstood. The former means you haven't understood how impossible change feels, how overwhelming and hopeless the emotions are. The latter means you don't care how much pain they are in. You don't realise how not OK it is.


We both saw it, it was a lightbulb moment. As was the solution recommended by the specialist writing. First, they said, you have to show you have heard and understood the person's feelings. How overwhelmed and trapped they feel, how impossible they feel change is. But then you have to tell them that although it feels impossible, change is possible if you work for it.


And there it was. The gospel tearing down resistance to change. Jesus sees and accepts you just the way you are. Your feelings are real, they are understandable and they are OK. But he loves you way too much to leave you there, there will be change. The relationship between my friend and I had to be modelled on the relationship between Jesus and us. We both started talking differently to one another. I would express my feelings, openly, honestly, excruciatingly and she would hear, acknowledge, validate and affirm them. She would acknowledge their justice where just, and my frustration where they were irrational. From that day I felt heard. I felt understood and I was able to trust much better.


Then we would lay out a plan for where we wanted to get to. No matter that it felt impossible. We would shoot the moon and agree a plan for where I wanted to be. And then we would find a way to work for it. Look at God's character, his stories, his people, many of the places we went are laid out in this blog. We would pray honestly, confessing sin, unbelief, hurt, fear, seeking healing and change. And I would take the verses away to meditate on, to reflect on, to write about. I did this not because I believed I could change but as an act of faith that the one who could move mountains, could in fact move my mountain.


And against all my expectation, change started to happen. Roots that were dug down deep suddenly began to come loose. I'm not better and I'm still afraid of a return to the darkness but I can't deny that I am facing situations and people in a new, healthier way, that I am richly enjoying God's presence in a way I've not known before, that I am finding depths of comfort and strength in my relationship to Christ that were previously unfathomed.


We have setbacks. Days were struggle to hear each other, days we need to re-tread old ground, remember old truths. Its hard work, but rewarding, in the same way that digging up the dandelions from your lawn is more satisfying that chopping off the tops. Back-breaking, but this way we know they won't be growing back.


I may never be free from the emotional volcano beneath my feet, but I now believe, some days at least, that I can live free of the fear of it, free of the harmful defence mechanisms that have served their turn and gone past their usefulness, free of enslaving lies that tell me change is impossible, that the mountain is too big and your faith too small.


Most of all free in the truth of Colossians 3:12, that I am a dearly loved, chosen child of God, just as I am, utterly accepted. I can stop hating my feelings, stop fighting them, stop struggling to suppress them. They are mine and with all their excess and the ugliness they sometimes possess, Jesus looks at me and says you are OK, you are mine. But then free in also to change, to clothe myself with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness and love. Because Jesus accepts us as we are, but never leaves us where we are. He loves us too much for that. That is the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Silent night

In order to sin against someone we have to re-define them. We cease to see a person for who they truly are – a person of dignity and worth made in the image of God, a child beloved of God and precious in his sight. We de-humanise one another in order to justify asserting our needs and desires over one another. Lust happens when we objectify someone, we see them as an object to gratify our sexual desires and not as a person of dignity and worth. In order to be selfish or greedy I must first justify that my needs are more important than yours, and I usually do this by diminishing your humanity, by deciding I am worth more than you. The natural end of this process is murder, we degrade one another to the point that my needs and feelings are of more value than your life.

Even when we make an idol out of someone we have to deny that person their humanity. In a peverse way, by making that person’s words and actions too important in our lives we actually end up degrading them as we stop seeing them as a person in their own right and only see them in relation to how we feel about ourselves.

I’m pretty sure that all sin against one another is a form of oppression. It is a seeking of power over one another in order to define one another for our own purposes. Sometimes it is blatant, sometimes very hidden, but coded within all my acts of lust, selfishness, greed, envy, theft, dishonesty and sinful anger is the message that you, the object of my sin, are worthless and your thoughts and feelings are unimportant.

Now I have known for a long time that one answer to ridding sin of its damaging power in my life has been to refuse to let it define me as worthless. To meditate not only on who God tells me I am but also his right to have his definition be the one that I listen to. But I have only recently learned the power that sin has exercised over my life in silencing me. One extreme expression of stripping others of their worth and dignity is using our power not only to hurt others but then to dictate how they are allowed to respond to the harm we are doing them. It is the oppression that says you are not a person, you are a thing that exists to meet my needs. Crudely put, I am going to hurt you and then I am going to make you smile at me. The object of the sin is silenced, no one is allowed to hear their thoughts and feelings, they have been objectified and then robbed of the ability to protest their pain.

For my whole life whenever I have been in pain I have retreated into crushed silence, it has taken decades to begin to believe that there are people I can trust who will listen and who will hear. But whenever I come up against someone who cannot or will not hear me or someone who wants to silence the expression of my feelings because they don’t suit their purposes or they aren't convenient, the weight of silence descends again and I feel as helpless and unheard as I did when I was a child.

Seeing this has started me down a new track, one that has lifted the heavy yoke of silence from my shoulders. It is simply this – God hears. So simple, so easy, so life-changing. The feelings I crush down inside as a reflex to other people’s sinful demands suddenly have an outlet, an escape, this person does not hear me Lord, but you do, and this is how I feel. God hears my pain, and what is more, he cares.

I am no longer silenced, unheard, diminished, de-humanised. He hears and it matters to him. Reflecting on this I was drawn to these passages; here is unfolded God’s full response to those being silenced by oppression:

 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.  God saw the people of Israel—and God knew. (Exodus 2:24-25)

God heard, and God saw. The cries and tears and pain and suffering of his people are not hidden from him. He hears me and he sees me.

God remembered. This is how I know I can trust him, he makes promises and is faithful to keep them. He will not forget or abandon me.

God knew. He not only sees and hears, but he knows. But what kind of knowing – I think the parallel passage in Exodus 3 helps us out.

Then the LORD said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them”. 

(Exodus 3:7-8a)

Now he addresses them personally – I have seen, I have heard, I know. All the verbs of the passage before but now he adds one more, I have come down. And here is why this post is for Christmas. He has come down. He sees, he hears, he knows but all that would be no comfort if we couldn’t trust him, but we can because he remembers and he has come down. Come down to get involved, to get his hands dirty, to know my pain. To feel it, live it, bear it. He does not know with an abstract kind of knowing, but with the gritty, getting your hands dirty, walking in my shoes, experiencing oppression and pain for himself kind of knowing. Christmas is the ultimate fulfillment of this passage in Exodus. God doesn’t just hear, he intervenes, he delivers. Jesus arrives, he comes down into my mess and pain, into the mess and pain of our world, comes down with a promise to heal and bind up and set free. Comes down to a cross where he is broken, wounded and condemned so that promise can be kept. He comes down to declare that whatever oppression may say, I matter because he has chosen to die for me.

So I will not live anymore in silence, I cannot be silenced, the yoke of the oppressor has been broken, he has no more power over me. He may take away my words, my cries, even make me smile when I am in pain, but I am not a thing. I am a person who God hears and sees, who’s suffering he knows and for whom he came down. And when I face the person who does not or cannot hear me I no longer need them to. I am no longer crushed by their rejection of my humanity, my feelings. So I am free to see them as the person they are, a person made in the image of God and desperately in need of him. Being heard sets me free to break the cycle. Being heard sets me free to love. 

Give a man a spade...

I hate change. I know I'm not alone. It rather runs in our family for a start. New ideas take time to be adjusted to, changes are often preluded by weeks of grumpiness. We're an anxious bunch. I have a particular problem with unexpected change that I have no control over. I expect it might partly be all those times I was picked up from school and found we weren't going home but rather to grandparents, great aunts, or one particularly memorable night sleeping in the car at a service station. The slightly on edge feeling of nearly a decade of never being quite sure where I would be sleeping that night.

Anyway, take me by surprise with a significant change and chances are you will get panic and tears, however potentially good or bad it may be. It's on my mind as a poor church leader has had the misfortune to tell me twice in 18 months that I will be moving homegroups. Both for excellent and completely non-personal reasons but nevertheless resulting in profound changes in relationships and  completely out of my control.

I say poor church leader because both times, most latterly today, it has resulted in hysterical tears, irrational lashing out and knee-jerk panic. The initial panic now subsided I am left with a sense of uneasiness and unsettledness that would usually not dissipate until the change is accomplished and irrevocable. Experience tells me that once the change happens I will settle down fairly quickly and almost certainly happily but until then traditionally I will fret, and cycle in and out of panic and occasional paroxysms of sobbing and explosions of anger.

So perhaps this is the time to try to put into practice some of the things I have been learning over the last few months. As my friend says, you may have learned what a spade is, and that is useful, but the key is remembering to use it when you need to dig a hole. Or something like that. She likes concrete metaphors for her theology, does that friend.

So what is it I need to remember about God that will help me deal with the barely covered over panic? With the feeling that I just got settled in this group and now I have to start all over again with people I don't know at all. With the fear that I will lose everything good about my current homegroup and that it will be replaced by everything that has been bad about any homegroup I have ever previously been in. Some may say that a dose of rationality and common sense should do the trick. The change is unlikely to live down to my worst fears. The unknown is rarely as populated by monsters as I imagine it to be. And homegroup is only a small part of my very, very busy and people-filled life. However one thing I have learned is that my emotions rarely respond in a satisfactory way to rationality.

So where do I turn? What are the foundations I have been trying to build that are going to help me now? The one that comes to mind is one I mulled and meditated over when thinking about how I use anger to try and control situations where I am afraid - God the Lord is in charge. Now is the moment to cling to the truth that my loving Father is Lord over creation, over circumstance, over the past, present and future.

There are three verses that remind me of this truth most powerfully. The first is the simple promise of Romans 8:28-29, that whatever happens, good bad or ugly, God will work it together for good for me, who he has called and chosen to be made like Jesus. In the words of the old hymn,

"I have called thee Abba Father,

I have stayed my heart on thee,

Storms may howl and clouds may gather,

All must work for good to me."

The second is the staggering picture of Revelation 1, where the glorious and terrifying Son of Man, before whose majesty John falls in terror "as though dead", this mighty Lord stoops to lay his hand on John's shoulder before imparting the words of comfort, "Fear not, I am the first and the last and the Living One. I died and behold I am alive for evermore, and I hold the key to death and Hades." Jesus, the dreadful and awe-ful and powerful, says to us, there is nothing you need to be afraid of if you are with me. Death? I have defeated that. I am the Living One who died came back to life. Change? I am the first and the last, I know the end from the beginning, nothing takes me by surprise. Judgement? The key to death and Hades is in my hand, nobody else's judgement matters. And small, weak and dirty as you are before my purity and shining glory, I will bend down to you, I will at once be humble and gentle and fierce and almighty, and I will touch you and speak comfort to you.

The third and final place I have learned to grasp hold of when I am afraid and to which I need to turn now is Psalm 18. This Psalm never ceases to still my fears and calm my heart. Here I see God who hears, who is angry when I am distressed and whose anger shakes the very foundations of the earth, and who comes down to rescue me from those who are too mighty for me. I can lay hold of the truths in this Psalm of the Messiah as I stand in the righteousness of God the Son, in whom the Father delights. I matter because Jesus matters and Jesus is mine and I am his. So God cares about my hurts and fears, cares so deeply that they make him angry, cares so deeply that in Jesus he has come down to rescue me from them, come down to live through change and insecurity, loss and powerlessness, come down to defeat all the things that can harm me: the world, the flesh, the devil and death itself. God who makes the mountains shake and the sea roar has delivered me because he has delighted in me. How can I doubt this Lord will keep and provide and sustain me, that this Lord is indeed enough in himself if I should lose every other help I have.

So here is my spade. I know what it is and how to use it. Let's see if I can actually dig a hole.

An unwanted gift?

You will probably have heard this testimony many times, you may even have told it - apologies if you have. It goes, "I used to struggle with singleness a lot but I came to a point where I was really content and trusting God with it and that was when so and so came along and now I'm happily married with 10 children".

I have exaggerated it slightly but I can't count the number of times I heard a version of that story when I was in my 20s. I have two major problems with this story. The first is that it seems to hold out marriage as some sort of prize for sorting yourself out with God when it comes to singleness. Just get yourself in a place where you are content and God will give you what you really want. It's a recipe for self-deception or despair. And it doesn't seem to me to be accurate to life. I know loads of people who idolise marriage and/or struggled with singleness deeply up until the very moment they met their husband-to-be. I also know many who seem entirely at peace with their singleness who remain resolutely unwed. The second reason I dislike it is that it frankly seems smug, however it is intended. I am all sorted and have earned my married bliss, your singleness is really all your fault - be more holy and you'll get what you want.

I know it is meant as an encouragement to people to focus on contentment in the Lord but I honestly don't think its a useful way of doing it. It seems cruel in some ways, which God never is - here is a challenge, stop wanting what you want and maybe I will give it to you. There is a truth behind it, God in his kindness often withholds things we want that are bad for us because we want them in idolatrous ways but God's desire in withholding an idol is that we learn to want God more, not to squash our desires down in the hope God will think we have them under control enough to give us a husband.

I actually rarely hear this these days, as I grow older. Mostly I think because a couple of years into marriage most people start to realise they are not as sorted as they would like to think. The old idolatries are often still there below the surface once reality hits and marriage is tough and tiring, it no longer seems like something to brag about so much. These people are more likely to tell you how hard marriage is in response to your singleness angst - sorry guys, equally unhelpful to the struggling single.

So what is the answer to helping singles in their hurt. First you can recognise that there is a pain in feeling unchosen and unwanted. The best thing you can do for your single friends is to love them and welcome them into your home. I have been so incredibly blessed by married friends who have included me as part of their family. Where life doesn't stop when I come round, we play together with the children, join in bath and bedtime routines, muck in and help around the house. An hour at the house of a friend like this is worth a million words of encouragement. The second thing is to point them relentlessly to the God who has chosen them and wanted them. Who chose them before the creation of the world, who chose them to be his dearly loved children, who chose them as his bride, who chose them for blessing.

And the God who numbers their days and the hairs on their heads, who has good plans, whatever they may be. For me this was the final hurdle of contentment with singleness. I realised that the fact that I was single wasn't due to any personal lack in me, an inadequacy or unattractiveness, but because God had chosen it for my good. That took away the last sting of bitterness in singleness and set me free to enjoy all that it gives me.

Which brings me to the reason for my post. I love my singleness. I love the freedom it gives me to serve God, to love my friends, to have time for people, to do the job I love. I love the fact I don't have to negotiate the details of daily life with someone else in time-consuming compromises. I love the fact that if God was to say tomorrow, get up and leave Oxford and go here, I could just do it. No worries about jobs or schools or houses. Which gives God the possibility of doing just that. How exciting. So having reached a point where I not only don't fear singleness, but enjoy it how should I approach the possibility of being asked to surrender it?

At the moment this is still a hypothetical question but one which circumstances have pushed me to ask. And the answer is surprising. I am beginning to wonder if the purpose for which God has been preparing me by dealing with my difficulties with singleness is not marriage - but here's a controversial thought - singleness itself. Do I move from a place where I answer the relationship question with 'of course I would love a family if it is God's will for me,' to 'I feel I am right where God wants me to be in my life right now and I'm really not looking to change that.' In some senses it doesn't matter of course except that it affects how I treat men who seem to be interested in me. Many, many people have and would urge me to make the most of every opportunity to show a man I like I am interested in him, to accept someone who offers as long as I like him and he loves Jesus, to not close the door on opportunities, as if my aim was to find 'the man'. But I am in a place where I am not sure I want 'the man' at all. I certainly don't need a man to tell me who I am or my value, and I am not sure a husband would make me more fruitful in the ministry I feel called to, in fact I'm pretty sure it would make me less.

Even as I write this there is that nagging question at the back of my mind - are you a lunatic? Are you really saying that the world - including the Christian world - is wrong when they pity the single and strive after marriage? Are you really saying that you can choose singleness and childlessness with all its consequences later in life? Are you sure that the conviction today that you are where God wants you will feel quite such a good basis for making this decision in 30 years time? Those doubts are there but so is the fierce love of where God has me and what I am doing for his kingdom now. Things I wouldn't be able to do if I take the path of marriage. And the conviction that I don't need to be afraid. God has loved and chosen me and in heaven I will experience that so fully that missing out on the marriage experience here on earth with seem absolutely weightless compared with the satisfaction of having lived obediently and in dependence on him.

I don't know for sure which way this will go. God may bring someone along and make it absolutely clear that I should change my mind and marry them, and that I can be fruitful in that marriage in a way that I can't now as a single and that he wants me to be. But for the moment I am looking straight down the barrel of the possibility that the story I started this post with can have another ending, and that maybe for the sake of the church, a few of us should choose that ending, "I used to struggle with singleness a lot but I came to a point where I was really content and trusting God with it and now I am perfectly and peacefully content with my singleness and thank God for it and the opportunities it gives me and wouldn't want it to change."

Now you see me

Hagar was a woman and a slave. She was no saint in the ordinary, everyday sense, not above a bit of unattractive gloating, but in many ways she was a victim of her situation. She was trapped in circumstances of life far from her choosing, enslaved, forced to sleep with the husband of her mistress and then driven out into the desert by her mistress's jealousy, pregnant and alone.

Hagar was powerless to change her situation, she had no control, even over her own body. She was at the mercy of the whims of others, treated as a possession and as if she herself possessed no dignity or worth. People didn't look at Hagar, they looked through her, to the people who mattered. She was unloved, unvalued, an object to be used to fulfill the wishes of others and then to be discarded when she was no longer wanted or needed. And to a certain extent she was her own worst enemy provoking her mistress to rage by despising her infertility in spite knowing all the pain and shame and humiliation that entailed.

Hagar's story is extreme but in it I do see faint echoes of my own. I may not know what it is to be a slave, but I do know something of what it feels like to be trapped by circumstances and powerless to change them. I know something of what it feels like to be at the mercy of others and treated without compassion or dignity. I know something of what it feels like to be discarded and rejected. I certainly know what it is like to suspect my own unpleasant, ugly sin means I probably deserved most of what I got. I guess most of us do, some a little more than others. 

But as it is so common to find in the stories of God's people, Hagar's story comes with a twist in the tail. She did not die in the desert, instead she discovered there that she was not alone. There was one there who did not see her as a possession, who looked at her, not through her. There was one there who saw her dignity and her value as a person made in the image of God, to whom she was not a worthless object to be used and discarded. There was one there to whom she mattered and by whom although she may have been powerless, she was not unheard. 

The Lord came to Hagar and said to her, however others have treated you, however little you have been valued, I, the Lord, hear you and I, the Lord, see you. And Hagar, the woman, the slave, the sinner, the oppressed, the alone, was the first person in the Bible to give God a name. 

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” (Genesis 16:13)

Names for God describe a part of his character, Hagar had indeed seen God as she was privileged to give him a name to reveal part of his character to the world. That name was 'the God who sees me.' God sees me. That is his name, a fundamental part of who he is, so it can't and won't change. Whoever else has failed to see who I am, God has not. Whoever else has tried to tell me I have nothing of worth to offer, God does not. Others will get me wrong, will underestimate me, overestimate me, misunderstand me, look through me to the people who matter, but not God. He sees me. 

And like Hagar this seeing means blessing too. God did not merely restore to Hagar the worth and dignity she had as a human made in his image. He never does stop there, his heart is too full of love, his hand too generously full of gifts. He gave to Hagar the gift of the honour of being the mother of a great nation, a nation that would not be crushed or despised as she had been. To us of course he gives a much more precious gift the gift of the honour of being his child, found in Christ, the honour of being his beloved, clothed in Christ's beautiful righteousness, the honour of being his ambassadors to declare his name upon the earth. 

There is a cry of pain from my heart that says, "Why does nobody ever see me?" It's less a reality than it used to be but the wound is still there barely scabbed over and vulnerable to break open once again when knocked about by circumstance. The damage of the past is too deep to placate that cry with reassurances that things are different now, that there are people who do hear and do see. But there is an inexpressible comfort in this, which was true in the past, is true now and will always be true: "You are the God who sees me".

I've seen him weep

It's been a rough week. Not the worst, but rough. The kind of week where you need to hang on to God's goodness. When I have weeks like this there is one place I always turn to. It's a passage in the Bible that blows me away again and again. That grabs me by the guts, that shouts in my frazzled exhausted brain above the various other voices and noises that have lodged themselves in there.

Here it is:

"Jesus wept" (John 8:35).

And here is why I love this passage so much:

1) Jesus knows Lazarus is going to die. He loves him. And he lets it happen.

We are told Jesus loves Lazarus and his sisters, that he knows he is sick. Yet he waits two days, until he is able to tell his disciples for certain that Lazarus is dead before going to them at Bethany.

2) Jesus knows that Lazarus' death is for God's glory

When discussing Lazarus' sickness with his disciples Jesus says,  “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” And when Martha objects to opening the tomb of her dead brother Jesus says, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”. He is about to raise Lazarus and he knows that it will glorify God as it will lead many to believe in him and his resurrection.

3) Jesus knows Lazarus' death will result for his disciples' good

Although he clearly loves Lazarus, Martha and Mary very, very much he waits until Lazarus is dead before going to them. He waits two days until he knows he is dead and he tells his disciples,  “Lazarus is dead, ¹⁵ and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe." Jesus allows Lazarus to die for his disciples sake, so that they might believe in him as the resurrection and the life.

4) Jesus knows he is about to reverse the death of Lazarus

He knows that in a very short time he is going to raise Lazarus from the dead, that is clear from the very beginning of the story to the very end. The pain and suffering around him is about to turn to joy and celebration.

And yet...

"When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled, ³⁴ “Where have you laid him?” he asked.“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.
³⁵ Jesus wept."

He sees their pain, their grief, their ache of loss, the confusion of death which seems so empty and senseless and as if it should never have been. And in spite of all he knows he weeps.

God, my God, weeps for me. For the pain I feel in the fallen world I live in, for my ache and loss and confusion. Even though he allows it. Even though it will be to his glory. Even though it will result eventually for my good as I see in it more of who he is. Even though one day he will reverse it and restore all that was lost and damaged, because he is the resurrection and the life. All that knowledge, all that truth doesn't make him rationalise away my pain. He doesn't excuse it, or justify it, or try to make it better with words or logic. He just hurts and weeps with me.

Of course in time all the other things are true and will help, which is why they are here in this passage too. Suffering is for God's glory, for Christians he will redeem it for good, he will reverse it and restore what is lost. But the precious truth for me here is that there is nothing cold in God towards my suffering. So when he says in the moment of swirling anguish and darkness, trust me, I'm here, I haven't forgotten you, I see and I hear and it matters to me that you hurt, I know I can trust him. I've seen him weep.