The words of George Matheson come to me as I write this. In nineteenth-century Scotland he lived with an amazing amount of promise and potential. He was destined for greatness, and all was going wonderfully well for him. While engaged to be married he was suddenly hospitalized. He found he had a degenerative eye disease that would eventually blind him. Consequently, his fiancée broke off their engagement and left him with a broken heart. George Matheson, in blindness and brokenness, within a period of five minutes, penned these hymn lyrics:
O love that will not let me go
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
O joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.
“I trace the rainbow through the rain.” From the depths of despair, Matheson traced a rainbow through his personal rainstorm. Often looking at a sunset, holding close those we love, listening to a blackbird sing his song into the silence, can bring us back into knowing we might be okay and despite the uncertainty God is with us. It’s similar to those words found in a wartime consecration camp:
I believe in the sun
even when it is not shining
And I believe in love,
even when there’s no one there.
And I believe in God,
even when he is silent.
I believe through any trial,
there is always a way
But sometimes in this suffering
and hopeless despair
My heart cries for shelter,
to know someone’s there
But a voice rises within me, saying hold on
my child, I’ll give you strength,
I’ll give you hope. Just stay a little while.
I believe in the sun
even when it is not shining
And I believe in love
even when there’s no one there
But I believe in God
even when he is silent
I believe through any trial
there is always a way.
May there someday be sunshine
May there someday be happiness
May there someday be love
May there someday be peace….
Today is our third wedding anniversary! I met Lis here on Holy Island in April 2016 on retreat in Marygate House. Seven months later I proposed to her on the beach here I walked on last night on a very cold November afternoon! We were married the following March and the day after our wedding we had a blessing here in St Mary’s Church, our special “holy space” - we still value doing evening prayer here as much as we can. I remember thinking sitting next to Lis in the choir stalls nearly four years ago now “gosh - there’s someone else who gets this place as much as I do!” I never dreamt what that would lead to...
Later today as we’ve been through so much since we got married: ill health, moving house, journeying in a wilderness, more ill health, and now more journeying because our current house has turned out to be a disaster (🥵) before we hopefully can settle down for a long time in September, we have decided to renew our wedding vows in the church where our marriage was blessed and where we feel most in tune with God. We are glad that Sarah, the vicar here, is sharing this with us. She has been a huge part in keeping us going over the last year!
I’ve always found journaling helpful. Writing down what you feel to process what is going on around you can be therapeutic. We all have a story. When we know the story we can then ask what is the story about and where is God in it?
A good Lenten discipline would be to see how the Psalmist journaled. Life was not easy for him and he was never afraid to voice his angst at God. The thing is though all 150 Psalms are theocentric. Nowhere does he say God is not. He may not understand life’s lot but he places his confusion into the hand of God hoping God might come into where he is and sort him out! And it’s about accepting where we are even if we don’t want to be there today...
As Barbara Brown Taylor writes in “Learning to Walk in the Dark”:
”Our spiritual avoidance of the dark may be even more dangerous. Our culture’s ability to tolerate sadness is weak. ‘We are supposed to get over it, fix it, purchase something, exercise, do whatever it takes to become less sad.”
I’m amazed how uncertain our world is at the moment. The corona virus and its spreading is a worry; the fact that food banks are now rationing food is a scandal; communities are counting the cost of flooding; and politically we are in a mess: we face an American election in November and I really can’t see anything but a Trump re-election, and then there’s the dear old UK... where we have Brexit with the prospect of us walking away from talks because we don’t like what the EU are saying; there are allegations of a bullying Home Secretary; a Labour Party who desperately need to unite around whoever wins its leadership next month because we need opposition with teeth; and a Prime Minister who is worshipped by some parts of the media for fathering another child and getting engaged while the ink on his divorce papers is still wet.
How do we find sense while all about us is just so mad? I sense it is holding on to things we know won’t crumble when everything else seems to be changing. Things like a Holy Island sunset, the love of a very patient wife who could have walked away from the damage “stuff” has brought us over the last three years; and deep friendships and fun moments and yes, even stopping for a minute to hear a blackbird sing...
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