It’s very much an oldie now but you still hear people humming, whistling, mumbling the Boomtown Rats song: ‘I Don’t Like Mondays.’ Bob Geldof wrote it after hearing about a shooting in an elementary school in San Diego USA. A sixteen-year-old woman, Brenda Anne Spencer, fired at children in the school playground killing two adults and injuring eight children and one police officer. Her explanation for her crime was: ‘I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.’
No one would want to endorse such an extreme and horrific reaction but if we take the title of the song, it captures what many of us feel. That’s why people still hum it, whistle it, and mumble it. After a pleasant weekend it’s back to work, school, college and sometimes that involves a big psychological push. For me, Monday is the day when I receive chemotherapy at the Beatson which also involves taking steroids. I’m left a bit wobbly and that continues into Tuesday. It’s on Wednesday that I experience the crash. I’m told it has to do with the steroids. They give you a bit of a lift and then let you down, sometimes quite dramatically. So, for me it’s not Mondays that are the problem, it’s Wednesdays. I don’t like them.
It's not easy to describe what it’s like. The nearest I can get to it is ‘Space Dust’. If you are of my generation, you may remember it from the penny tray in the sweetie shop. You could say it was a more dynamic version of sherbet. When it went into your mouth it sparked and fizzed and bubbled, and all in all it was good fun. The more exhibitionist among us kept our mouths open when the sparking and fizzing and bubbling was going on. Well, it’s good to share the best of yourself. Wednesday is like having Space Dust sprinkled on my brain and it’s not such good fun. You feel you are not part of this world, you slow down, concentration is low, you sometimes have to think carefully before you speak.
I don’t like Wednesdays, but they are opportunities to focus on Paul’s vision of contentment:
‘ . . . I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.’ (Philippians 4: 11-13).’
So how do we take this forward? It’s not just about relaxation techniques and trying to be calm. It’s not just about gritting your teeth and being determined that you will not be overwhelmed by this experience. It’s not even about focussing on your favourite Bible verses – although of the three options opened up here that is obviously the best. What is needed is the conviction that no matter how you may feel the God revealed in the Scriptures and supremely in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is present in the midst of the Space Dust. It’s a challenge. But to say anything else is to say there are some areas of life that God has abandoned. That there are some areas of life that are too dark, too painful, too perplexing for Him to dwell in.
A seventeenth century frier Brother Lawrence wrote a devotional book called The Practice Of The Presence Of God which has at its heart the conviction that we are never out of the presence of God whether engaged in the most menial tasks or struggling to make sense of the darkest circumstances. God is present. Nothing will ever separate us from His love. His good purpose for His people will never be sabotaged by the worst of times. We need to pray out of this conviction even when it doesn’t feel true.
Many years ago, a friend of mine told me that he wasn’t convinced that you can pray anywhere and at any time. You need time set apart, and a special place. Certainly, you can point to Jesus and His frequent ‘drawing apart’, to be alone with His heavenly Father. But He also prayed on the cross when He no longer felt the presence of God and considered Himself abandoned. He continued to practice the Presence when to paraphrase the hymn he felt the Father had turned His face away.
It is this perseverance with the God revealed to us in Scripture and in the life and ministry of Jesus that opens us up to the strength experienced by Paul and leads us to that contentment that can be hours even in the days we don’t like.
