Still Quarrying: The Fruitful Vine.

I have not been a diligent blogger recently.  At many levels the medication I am on at present is taking its toll.   However, what follows below appeared as a Facebook memory today, a pastoral letter I wrote eleven years ago when I was coming to terms with a blood abnormality that might develop into cancer.   I have no clear memory of having written it but thought it might be appropriate in the season of Lent.

 I had never read anything by Ben Okri until recently when this prize-winning novelist and poet wrote an article for a Sunday supplement.  He mentioned his childhood in Nigeria  in a time of civil war.  Young Ben saw things that even now he finds difficult to talk about.  Dead bodies in rivers.  People shot in the streets.  He writes:

 

‘I’ve blanked out a lot of it.  But writing comes partly out of being wounded by life.  Something has had to have bruised and shaken you a little bit; otherwise, why do we ask questions?  It’s very rare that people who have lived perfect lives become artists because the need to create art is connected to a need to heal something that is imperfect.’

 

There’s a lot to think about there but I am struck by his idea that suffering can be creative.  Certainly, you don’t have to go too far into the artistic world to find this borne out.  The painting of Van Gogh and the music of Tchaikovsky were the products of tortured psyches - and it has often been said that Bob Dylan is at his best when he is going through a bad time. 

 

Let’s be clear.  Suffering is never to be commended.  No one wants it.  Of course there are people, perhaps the majority, who look at their suffering and find no answer to the question why and, moreover, see no good in it.  But the testimony of people like Ben Okri shows there is this other side to the darkness.  And then there is the Cross.  On the face of it a disgusting spectacle but it stands at the centre of our faith as an assurance that there is forgiveness with our God and the promise of a life beyond this life.  Jesus sacrifice was motivated by a need to heal something that was imperfect in us.

 

This tells me that there are no no-go areas for our God, not even our experiences of pain, abandonment and anguish.  Nothing prevents him working out His purpose in our lives; in fact he works through our suffering to make us the people he wants us to be.  Jesus once said something startling: ‘I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.’  (John 15: 1-2)  I confess that I haven’t done much pruning in the garden but doesn’t it involve cutting, breaking and sap bleeding from branches?  But it is all necessary for the plant or tree to grow towards its full fruitfulness.  Jesus says the same process is necessary for spiritual fruit to grow in our lives. 

 

This is one of the challenges of Easter.  To live as Jesus lived in the firm conviction that while the Father’s will is sometimes hard, it is always good. 

Still Quarrying: Vast Eternal Plan.

 

I never saw Fiddler On The Roof but at one time everyone was familiar with one of the big moments when the main character, Tevye, sang ‘If I Were A Rich Man.’   It came to mind the other day when I heard that the actor who played Tevye in the movie, Chaim Topol, had died.   For some reason two lines from the song stuck in my mind.  Crying out to God Tevye says:

‘Would it spoil some vast eternal plan/

                                                                     If I were a wealthy man.’  

In the outworking of the providence of God surely there is room for a Tevye who has no financial worries and can provide the best for his family.  Would there really be any major disturbance in the goodness, justice and love of God if this was to happen?  We can all get caught up in this current of thought. It may not be a yearning for money but substitute ‘wealthy’ for ‘healthy’ or anything that we believe will enhance our quality of life and we stand with Tevye.  What would it cost God to make our lives just that bit easier?  Surely  that would be the merest tweak to the ‘vast eternal plan’.

That protest can be heard time and again in Scripture.  Man and women faced with pain, poverty, persecution, psychological and spiritual desolation and yearning for something better.  David, Job, Paul come to mind.  Sometimes their prayers were answered but often not - or at least not in the way they expected.  What they were challenged to believe was that whatever the circumstances God was still present and still working out his good and loving purpose for their lives.  Their suffering did not exclude them from the ‘vast eternal plan.’      

I was faced with this challenge in the first year of my studies for the ministry.   There were many books I had to read and some made a big impact,  but none more than a book that was not on my reading list and written by someone who would not be recognised in academic circles as a front-line theologian.  It was called A God Who Acts by Harry Blamires.   It was an attempt to work out what the Incarnation teaches us about God and how He works in the lives and circumstances of men and women.   Central to Blamires thought is that the life of Jesus was on the surface not one of success and accomplishment, pain free and without any psychological or spiritual disturbance.   And yet, God was in Christ, and through a life that that was anticipated by Isaiah as being characterised by sorrow and acquaintance with grief He made it possible for humankind to be redeemed from sin and death.  

Blamires writes:

‘The God of Christians, if he is truly revealed in Jesus Christ, is not a distributor of earthly  success and prosperity.  His chosen course on earth brought his disciples to a shameful rout, and the most faithful ones to the foot of his cross.  Few of us have the right to declare what is the true nature of that Kingdom of Heaven in which we are called to share here and now.  But many of us can safely what it is not.  It is not an eternal Speech Day, at which prizes are handed out to the week’s best pray-er of prayers and the weeks best doer of good works.  God chooses no “Man of the Year” to whom to present a silver trophy - a cup flowing over with health and wealth . . . If we turn earnestly to God, imagining that we are entering a discreet competition for the award of earthly well-being, then sooner or later, with more or less pain, God will make plain our error.’  

Blamires recognises that this can come over as being unduly morbid but if God was in Christ then He is present in suffering and able to work through suffering to a good end.  In one of the worst experiences in the life of David when all his natural resources seemed to dissolve we are told he ‘found strength in the Lord his God.’  (1 Samuel 30: 6).  That was possible because of the closeness of God to human experience the ultimate assurance of which is in the life and ministry of Jesus.  

When we think of quality of life we think of material stability, good health, rewarding relationships but from the perspective of God the absence of these does not mean exclusion from the ‘vast eternal plan’ but fixes us more firmly in its outworking and takes us forward in the hope of what can be accomplished even in our brokenness.