Over at the wonderful ASBO Jesus conversation we have found ourselves discussing whether God intervenes to make up for the Christian church's shortcomings. I found myself remembering a couple of stories that I've been told or been a part of.
Derek, Lyn's son, did not meet up with Lyn for some ten years during his teenage years. This separation was largely due to a decision made by Lyn, but still it caused great anguish on both parts. At one level, there can be no good that can come from the separation of children from parents, but Lyn told me of the amazing development in Derek over this period. During that ten years he had obviously wanted to spend time with Lyn but couldn't meet up. Consequently, he had learned how talk, ask questions, give time for answers and be interested in others... (how many teenage boys offer more than a grunt in communication?) A silver lining or a 'severe mercy'?
The second story happened to me. About 5 years ago, I went for a promotion at my previous university. I didn't get the job and the way that I didn't get the job was horrid (a message left for me on a mobile phone answering machine. To make things worse, the message was left on someone else's mobile phone not mine!) There followed a painful period where I had to come to terms with the fact that any chance of progression at that university was over for me and, given my age, I was probably going to struggle to get to another university and get promotion there. All sorts of 'demons' about my feelings of self worth ripped into me. I spent a miserable year 'plodding on'. Looking back now, I can have a more balanced reflection on the mistakes that I made and the insensitive folly for the dean of the school there. What I remember with more gratitude, however, was how God met me in that wilderness and used that time to speak to me in a new way, offering me a new way forward, offering me a new relationship. I'm not sure that I would have heard his still small voice without missing out on that job. I still haven't been promoted. I still struggle with the pain that my vanity and consequent lack of worth from that detail causes me. But there is also a joy in that story, a joy of a relationship recreated, a new pilgrimage started upon and I am glad that that painful year came my way. CS Lewis wrote of a "severe mercy" I can understand that now.
Sometimes God transforms horrid situations (I think of when he healed my son, Pat of meningitis), but often, he just walks through a situation with us, grace somehow seeping into the situation to bring beauty - maybe not to us, but someone else? And sometimes, I sense that Jesus weeps, sharing the agony of a fractured world; grief stricken that he can not change the situation without denying our freedom... there's a grace to be found in weeping beside our Lord... it changes something in the situation, even if we can't quite spot what it is that has been changed.
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