Trusting When it Seems so Wrong to me

Last week I had a few glorious days at Harnhill Christian Healing Centre in Gloucestershire, a truly wonderful place of ministry, peace and quietness. I went to wait on God for his guidance in my life but also to receive prayer for healing. I was not disappointed and really enjoyed my time there, but I learned some valuable lessons by just observing nature around me. With the warm weather that week and the sights and sounds of scores of new born lambs leaping in the sunshine it felt like a glimpse of heaven! I saw one ewe give birth to triplets, only then to discover that there was a fourth lamb on its way. This tiny creature slithered into the world and the long-suffering mother began to lick off the protective yellow coating with a sigh as if it had just come in home late after falling in a puddle. Yet the beauty of the week was challenged by the fact that the farmer had to then remove two of the lambs due to the ewe not being able to suckle them all. He seemed almost heartless in his matter-of-fact approach to his task even though I knew him to be a man who cared deeply for his sheep. The bereaved ewe could not have known this but those lambs would be given to other sheep that had lost their own lambs by being stillborn. There was method in his harshness and even a touch of mercy in his apparent indifference to her bleating cries.

Clearly from the ewe's point of view the shepherd was being really harsh and cruel, taking away her precious offspring and the fruit of her hard work. Only he really knew what the gift of those lambs would mean to some distant bereaved sheep, perhaps even on some other farmer's land as they co-operated together in lambing time. Being a shepherd is a tough job and those who undertake it are not soft, though they are usually well meaning and wise. Our divine shepherd asks us to keep on trusting him even when his actions may cause us grief or pain. Having been a patient in a London hospital many times in the last 12 months I have reflected on this mystery often. What I have discovered is that in every circumstance of life it is important for the sheep to keep trusting Jesus who described himself as "the good shepherd who gives his life for the sheep". No flock could ask for more from its shepherd even if they fail to understand his methods. He has good plans for us even in the difficult times. He knows what he is about and our job is to welcome him and trust in him.

So Harnhill was good for me.  It enabled me to reaffirm my confidence that I am willing to let God set the agenda in my life even if that means the awful pain I go through daily. I can't discern or describe any worth or purpose in this but I do acknowledge that my 'good shepherd' has a plan and I choose to trust in him.  And you?

Easter Saturday - a place of comfort and strength!

"It's Friday - thank God Sunday's coming!" is an attitude to Easter that I can understand. But Saturday seems to have fallen off the Christian radar as an irrelevant day. Jesus died on Friday - so that dreadful day becomes Good Friday for those who realise that he died to obtain our salvation, the forgiveness of our sins. Sunday is self-evidently the highlight of the Easter story. Jesus did not remain dead, he rose again and destroyed the power of death over our lives. But hey - don't forget Saturday!

At the heart of the amazing achievements of the first Easter is a day of disappointment. The great teacher and prophet is dead. Hope lies discarded in a Middle Eastern tomb. Despair and sorrow are the emotions filling the hearts of all those who loved Jesus. Except perhaps for one. Joseph of Arimathea was the one who asked Pilate for the broken body of Jesus. It was he who pulled out those cruel nails and laid the frail frame down, wrapping him in a clean linen cloth. Then he carried the bloodstained mess to his own garden and laid it in the grave that he had prepared beforehand. I reckon that Joseph had heard and understood the prophecies Jesus made about his coming death and resurrection. He welcomed Saturday as a vital part of the Easter story. He knew that for the power of the Easter message to work there had to be a pit of despair and death in his spring garden. In a miracle much more profound than Christmas Joseph carried the Lord of Glory as a broken corpse and welcomed mystery into the heart of his faith.

As I face my own twentieth Easter with the appalling pain of chronic and recurring acute pancreatitis I find comfort waiting in the garden belonging to Joseph of Arimathea. I find the "now but not yet" message of the Kingdom of God becomes clearer sitting and waiting outside this cold tomb. My Jesus is Lord of Easter Saturday with all its pain and disappointment even if it does not look like it. His broken body did not stay that way but the fact that it was even laid in a cold stone tomb gives me hope.  Of course I can't stay here - because he is not here now He is risen! My own body will one day be like his resurrected body and until that day I choose to embrace the mystery of as-yet unanswered prayer and trust that God knows what he is doing. But for today I take comfort from my Saviour's tomb. "It's Saturday - but thank God Sunday's coming!"