It has only been four days since I officially retired but already people are asking me how it feels. That is not easy to say since time is being filled with preparations for the Big Move. There has not been a lot of opportunity for reflection. But you take for granted that this will be one feature of the days ahead: more time for reflection. And then there are the things people have been suggesting to me: more time for the family, opportunity too enjoy a slower pace of life, writing that book that many seem to think is bursting to get out. The thing is, I am tentative about making too many plans. I cannot help thinking about colleagues who were not given much of a retirement before they were overwhelmed by what George Mackay Brown called ‘death’s slow weatherings and sudden bolts’. Plans were made, projects started, the future seemingly brimmed with new opportunity, but the shadow fell.
There is a voice within telling me that I should not be thinking this way but reality has to be faced. Jesus once told a story about a man whose elaborate plans for retirement were scarcely made before the curtain was brought down on his life. (Luke 12: 16-21). And I suppose living with long-term cancer tends to colour your perspective.
This is not to say that plans should never be made but in facing the future your priority has always to be the God who promises to be with His people in every circumstance and no matter how deep the darkness promises to be working out His good and loving purpose. His plans may be different. This is where faith is given an opportunity. Faith in the God who is revealed in the experience of the ancient people of Israel and supremely in the ministry of Jesus. Faith that is expressed in Scripture in deeply personal terms.
There is a song which says:
‘Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water
Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea.’
This sort of thing does not appeal to everyone, tends to engender a spiritual queasiness. But you do not go far in Scripture to find faith expressed in such terms. The Psalms reflect the worst of human experiences: persecution, disease, unbearable pain, depression, fear of death. In Psalm 73 there is a reflection of a time of deep spiritual darkness when the Psalmist’s heart ‘was grieved and my spirit embittered.’ (v. 21). Yet faith survives:
‘Yet I am always with you ;
you hold me by my right hand.’
You guide me with your counsel,
and afterwards you will take me into glory.’ (Vv. 23-24.)
This is what Eugene Petersen describes as ‘earthy spirituality’, recognising the brokenness of human existence and how it stretches all our inner resources but still believing that God is in the midst as our Companion, directing us forward according to His good and loving purpose. The supreme assurance of this is in the life and ministry of Jesus. We need to reflect more on John 1: 14: ‘The Word became flesh and lived amongst us.’ Flesh with all its frailties, physical, psychological and spiritual. So we can face the future with confidence that whoever circumstances fall to us God is present holding us by the hand.
Psalm 73 ends with one of the most complete statements of faith in Scripture:
‘My flesh and my heart may fail,
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.’ (v. 26.)
The plans will formulate I have no doubt. But more than anything else I pray that this faith will dominate.
