Suddenly, unexpectedly, it’s time to depart on the next round of hospital tests, this time in Melbourne.

This is the third such trip I have made.  Like the ‘Three Peaks’ bush walk we used to attempt in the Blue Mountains as kids, each trip presents a more challenging mountain to climb.

It’s a day if firsts!  It’s the first time Bugger and I have flown together.  The first time we’ve been pushed along by someone I don’t know.  The first time I’ve been up in one of those dinky little hoists instead of climbing the aircraft steps.  The first time I’ve wheeled into a disabled toilet.  And the first time I’ve wheeled into a disabled toilet already occupied by an elderly lady who evidently couldn’t master the electronic door closer.  Not cool!  None of these milestones gives me much joy; quite the opposite.  But the warmth and helpfulness of the people I have met on the way is moving indeed.  Including Mrs Kafoops in the loo.  It’s almost worth tasting the challenges of disability just to savour the ‘milk of human kindness’ that seems to be evident in everyone I meet.

Over the last year or so my Favourite Wife and I have come into the habit of beginning each day at the Lord’s Table, or Communion, or whatever you like to call it.  It’s always been my job to bring Karen a morning cup of tea, and now we add bread and red wine to the tray.  It’s a marvelous ritual: clarifying and simplifying both life and prayer.  It’s an opportunity for submission to God’s will that can lead to a sense of profound contentment.  Yesterday we read from Luke 5, “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.  These two small words, Leave & Follow, captured for us the simple rhythm of a life of faith.  I am so tempted to cling to aspects of the past – both good and bad – but life is lived in the present and the promise is always for the future.  ‘Leaving’ is a daily and momentary experience that helps me understand the ephemeral nature of my journey.  I learned at school that every 7 years our entire cellular structure is replaced (I wonder if that’s true?)  We are literally leaving ourselves behind.  But leaving is inadequate without a destination.  I am being drawn forward, and I follow the call.  I am grateful for what lies behind, but I press on towards all that lies ahead.

The challenges of this third trip are not merely physical.  The longer I travel without a diagnosis, the more sober the doctors become.  But more on that topic some other time; today I am very content just to leave, and to follow.

(This is a ‘blog on the run’, typed on my phone at Melbourne airport sans spell-check!)

I believe absolutely that God heals.  But I don’t believe that he must, that he should, or that he necessarily will.

This is a tough question for Christians to deal with; and one that confronts me again and again.  I’m hesitant to write about this.  I worry that my discussion might be lopsided, or that there might be a gaping hole in my thinking.  But my greatest concern is that what I believe (and writing seems to cement belief) might determine the possibility of recovery.  There is some truth in that; but it’s a fragile way of thinking, and I wonder if it isn’t the nub of the whole issue?  Surely God is much bigger than me.

I once knew a man who had been part of a small church whose pastor had lost the fight with cancer.  This Christian group had steadfastly believed in the certainty of their pastor’s healing; so much so that he was finally buried with a bell in his hand, just in case he needed to announce his return to life at the last moment.  Although on one level that story might speak of tenacious faith, I think it’s actually a terrible tragedy of misplaced faith.  I can’t imagine how his family and friends would find peace again.

When I first read research that concluded that Christians have just as many motor vehicle accidents (and slightly more divorces) as those without faith I was taken aback.  I was a lot younger then, and it just wasn’t what I was expecting the article in Christianity Today would say.  But since then I have seen exactly this in many settings.  As a pastor I’ve seen so much triumph, and so much trial.  As a father my life seems as taxing and as rewarding as the next man’s.  When we were building and farming we faced much the same round of ups and downs as everyone else.  More recently I spent a week or so in a Neurological Ward where the Nursing Unit Manager was a very gifted person, and a sincere Christian.  Discussing who meets with tragedy and who escapes it she said, “I see everyone here, there is no difference”.

Christians are not exempt from the trials of life, but they are never alone.  Faith is no guarantee of an easy life; in fact I wonder if it isn’t more like a beacon, drawing the very opposition over which it triumphs.  The characters of scripture seem to me to confirm this fact: by and large they faced insurmountable odds in life, and often ended up looking to a more distant horizon.  Their hope was not finally for this world, but for the next.

In the Gibson Desert as an 18-year-old I was bemused by the dramatic tale a missionary brought back from her 2000km round trip to Kalgoorlie.  It was a pretty rough and lonely track, much of it dirt, and Thelma had picked up a flat tire.  Soon enough a police patrol came along and offered to change the wheel.  It wasn’t until the policeman got down on the ground that the true crisis emerged: a fuel line was blocked and in the desert heat the petrol had boiled, forcing the tank to swell and bulge dangerously under the pressure.  “Hallelujah!” she declared.  “Thank you God for giving us a flat tyre!”  My cynical response was to question why God didn’t simply unblock the fuel line and cut out the middle man.  I thought the whole episode was silly.  To my shame I sneered at this story for many years, until it dawned on me.  It’s the journey God values, not just the destination.  The explosive fuel tank wasn’t a disaster needing divine intervention as much as it was an opportunity for God to turn up, to get involved, to become flesh again and walk with the people he loves.  If you’re looking for God you’ll always find him in the detail.  He’s alongside us, getting his hands dirty.  He wants nothing more than to be with us.  “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” says John 1.

Where, then, is God’s blessing?  And where are the miracles?  Ashley Barker describes shalom, God’s peace, as “a radical realignment to the way things are”.  It seems to me that faith in Christ isn’t a way to change things; it’s the way to travel through things.  The Blessing of God is seen in the extraordinary way he cares, protects, provides and loves us on the way.  I encounter this blessedness constantly; most profoundly in the reassurance of peace, but wonderfully in a thousand other details of daily life.

I for one won’t hang my faith on something as fragile as my own future.  My love for God will never be based on his performance, just as his love is certainly not based upon mine.  Nor will I accept the hopelessness that results from having hope in healing alone.  My hope is based in knowing God’s love no matter what the future holds.

God is indeed much bigger than me.

How can it be that we sit high above the Falls Creek snowfields in a luxury apartment while a million Haitians suffer the horrors of homelessness, hunger, disease and crime? Why am I allowed to enjoy the rooftop of the world while others have no roof at all? How do I balance gratitude for all I have with responsibility to those who have not?

These questions eat at my heart, I do not know the answers, and I came away on a two day vacation with my Favourite Wife hoping to listen for truth.

Almost half the world – over three billion people – live on less than $2.50 a day. At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. According to UNICEF, 25,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death” (UrbanMinistry.com).

I grew up in a beautiful part of Sydney in a magnificent family home. We lived on the North Shore, in the suburbs that are often described somewhat acerbically in the media as ‘leafy’; where the beautiful people live in beautiful houses. And I loved it; enjoying sweeping views of the harbour and daily walks to swim or fish on any of several beaches. Our gang of cousins and friends enjoyed an idyllic childhood roaming the harbour foreshore bushland. We mastered several ingenious ways of getting into nearby Taronga Zoo, the most daring of which involved sneaking quietly through the North American Bison enclosure; far removed from other exhibits because of their smell. By about age 18, spurred on by an encounter with Mother Theresa, my adolescent instinct was to reject all of this and look for truth on the open road. I somehow found my way into the Gibson Desert as a junior missionary, carrying a mixture of guilt and denial about my silver-spoon homeland.

Renunciation, however, simply avoids the question, and is dangerously close to ingratitude. Gratitude is essential, I am deeply thankful to God for every experience of His world, and for the richness of my life that has allowed me the luxury of choice.

We cannot plead ignorance; our flat panel TVs bear nightly witness to the true state of the world. Nor can we plead impotence: an online gift to Haiti or Somalia or anywhere else on the planet can be made from most of our lounge rooms in a moment.

Nor does our own suffering acquit us, although I have learned that you can rarely guess the pain of another, no matter how comfortable their life appears. From my own recent medical predicament I can recall the faces of over 50 doctors who have treated me in 16 months, and yet in many parts of the world there is just one doctor to meet the dire needs of tens of thousands. Similarly, Karen and I feel we have earned our vacation because our little girl is in respite care for the first time in some nine months. We might sleep all night! But this sense of self-justification comes nowhere near answering the question: what must we do?

A Christian friend sent me this quote during the week: “Sleeping comfortably in our beds while 1000 million human beings are not just suffering but surely and painfully dying from deprivation in hopelessness and fear, speaks not of our conversion but eloquently of our complacence” (Anthony Gittens). My complacence troubles me immensely, as do the BIG questions of God’s sovereignty and our responsibility.

It snowed here in Falls Creek two days ago and it’s an acid test of my own insatiable appetite that I’m more than a little disappointed that the snow didn’t wait for ME! Surely God could have arranged that. In fact I have to make the ugly confession that my prayers and hopes were as much for the possibility of another snow fall as they were for the suffering world beyond the breathtaking horizon. Enough never seems to be enough.

Shortly after arriving home a mob of Kangaroos grazing over the road from our home spoke to me in a surprisingly impacting way. It’s a story for another day, but I was reminded that there is a divine purpose in our lives; that – if we are willing – we are in the right place at the right time, bearing great gifts that can make a world of difference.

In last week’s blog I firmly rejected any comment, warning against sugary platitudes. But this week I know that I do not know enough. I welcome your thoughts…

I feign rapt attention while the occupational therapist explains to me how to conserve energy.  Only part of my mind is available for today’s session on “Caring for your Body during Daily Activities”.

While the OT explains how to “Rest before you get tired”, in my imagination I am playing the solo violin for Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in the Sydney Opera House.  My performance is note-perfect, from start to a standing ovation!  I am a gifted daydreamer, so it’s not at all difficult for me to do this.  It’s quite untrue that men can only do one thing at a time: I can think about anything at all while I’m meant to be doing something else. 

I snap back to reality because I appreciate what I’m learning.  She’s good at her job and she knows that I need to hear this stuff, no matter how much I’d like to escape it.  It’s all about tasks and time, and it’s all timely and true.  Everything takes me an awful lot longer nowadays.  There is the same amount of time in the day, but I get so much less done.  I unpack the dishwasher in stages, putting all the things from the high cupboards in a pile so I only have to stand up once.  Plastics have to be carefully piled up on my walking frame and pushed over to their cupboard last of all.  (There! I’ve said it. I also have a walker).

“Keep to your plans and targets as much as possible”, she says. 

I’ve been having some odd thoughts lately.  As I struggle to produce much from day to day I find myself reviewing and judging the years past.  How well did I spend my time, back when life was easy?

The next topic, “Utilizing special equipment”, makes my skin crawl. 

I’d like to live my life just like the Four Seasons performance currently going on in my imagination: note perfect, from my beginning to a standing ovation!  I want to get it right, to live well. To succeed. To earn approval. Bravo!  “Well done, good and faithful servant!”  And, candidly, I’ve done OK now and then.  For example I think I’ve done rather well with some of my wife’s birthdays.  (In fact, I’ve done such a darned good job that I’m grinning as I write, planning the next one).  And I’ve done one or two other things quite well also; things that are, perhaps, even more important than my wife’s birthday in the grand scheme of life.  But the honest, cold-hard truth is that much of my life so far has been frittered away in pointless indulgence. Self-satisfying pursuits.  Time wasted rather than invested.  I joke that the reason I don’t shave is that I have been using the time saved to earn a degree.  But, truth be told, I’ve been working on a degree for many years and yet it lies incomplete; like so many other good endeavours.   My train of thought is regularly anxious and unproductive.  There have been too many words and actions I deeply regret.  I’m pretty sure comparison is a dangerous mistake, but none the less when I compare my achievements to those of my peers I come up wanting. When I compare myself to the great men and women in this world … well there is simply no comparison. 

“Sit whenever possible” my O.T. intones.  Now that’s something I can relate to! 

There are, for some reason, people who actually read my blog.  So if you are reading this, please don’t rush to reassure me; don’t post a sugary comment to mollify my observations.  Like it or not, confronting as it is, this is the truth.

God I need help!

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. Thankfully life is not lived in just four movements.  How bleak it would be to have just one chance at sowing a harvest, to have only one summer drifting into one endless winter.  I am grateful for the simple fact that each day brings with it a new opportunity to live well.  I’m immensely grateful that Paul – a New Testament writer that I appreciate more and more – wrote these words:

 “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3).

 “Establish your priorities”. Yes, I think I will!

It’s been a wheely big day! Good friends have come to my home and spent hours helping me build a ramp up to the front door, and I’ve been to a personal ‘wheelchair fitting’ down at our local rehab. That’s an experience!

Back when I wrote A Gift Unwelcome I touched on the question of supremacy: who would dominate in my new relationship with a wheelchair? I’ve since discovered that I can stay on top through the use of a simple physical manouver: I sit on it. Pinned down this way it’s completley under my controll, and causes me little trouble. The chair and I have entered into a cautious friendship. Actually, we’ve started going out together. At this early stage I am determined to keep the relationship purely physical; but I must admit the temptation to take it to an emotional level is ever present.

Our relationship is still conflicted at some points. The combat goes on, but I notice the wheelchair is no longer crouched in the corner, trying to intimidate with its cold, metalic stare. Its new strategy is subtle and more finely tuned: It whispers! I constantly hear it murmur, “Let’s get emotional baby!”

I heard the deceitful whisper on Christmas Eve when we made our first public appearance. We went to church together, and I spoke on the mystery of a Child-King whose humility would change the world. The wheelchair’s whispering enticement to embarrassment and awkward self pity was hard to resist.

I heard the tricky whisper loud and clear when I called on a couple of mates to help me build the ramp. “Whose problem is this anyway?” it taunted. Earlier today we went to Bunnings to buy our materials. Before too long I had to accept my friend’s offer of a push along the vast aisles. I’ve never had to ask for that sort of help from a mate before. Mates lend a hand; good ones will do just about anything for you. But mateship is also about equality, it’s about adventure: fighting against the odds, side by side. Surely it’s not meant to be about being pushed in a wheelchair, where you can’t even see your friend’s face. I wonder if you can hear the whisper?

During a break in today’s ramp building I packed the chair into the car for an appointment with an occupational therapist and a wheelchair supplier at Community Rehab. There I learned that wheelchairs are individually ‘scripted’ from a bewildering aray of options. And the whisperer tempted me to adopt the pose of a victim; to abandon my self; to embrace dissability.

In spite of these minor challenges, what surprises me most of all is how happy I am. I’m wheely happy! The external, whispering voice is gloomy. Relentlessly discourageing, it seems to call for the lowest emotions, for despair and sorrow. But within me there is another voice: a song of joy, hope and strength. During this busy day I had a brief word with a friend who looks at things with unusual depth. He reminded me that it’s a holy thing when friends work together. “More importantly”, he said, “perhaps life is meant to be enjoyed; and perhaps we appreciate it most when we realise that it comes in limited supply”.

In losing a little I have found great depth of life in everything else. I’m wheely grateful for that!

Rejoice!

New Year’s was a noisy affair. It’s a blunt instrument. So much talking, and so much telling.

“Happy New Year!” In the last few days I have found myself offering this time-honoured greeting to one and all. I messaged it to family and friends; I shook hands earnestly with church people; it seemed to be an essential component in every phone call. I felt oddly compelled to speak those thee small words! Have you ever stopped to wonder just what they mean?

The New Year’s experience I found most unsettling wasn’t the reveling throngs or the fireworks, or even the chirpy television presenters with nothing to say (has our culture completley lost the ability to express anything of substance?). It wasn’t the stream of New Year’s greetings from celebrities, news anchors, politicians and anybody else with something to sell. What I couldn’t easily deal with was the barage of New Year’s greetings that came by SMS, Facebook, Twitter, and email. The standard New Year’s greeting that I recieved runs something like this:

“Happy New Year!!! May your day be full of fun and may 2010 be an awesome year of prosperity and success.”

I feel like a contortionist in a box when I contemplate that version of the future. With the best of intentions we all tell each other in absolute terms what we hope for, the good things that will happen, and how astonishingly different the future will be. Of course we wish each other well, but a little thought reveals how superficial and implausable those wishes will be for many of us.

Every 12 weeks I have a somewhat alarming medical appointment. It begins with a technician inviting me to repeatedly exhale as fast and long as possible into a machine. Oddly enough I enjoy the test itself, it’s a challenge that I rise to with an unusual capacity, because I hapen to have spectacularly large lungs. I assume that this is a simple correlation with my spectacular height. Helped perhaps by years of woodwind practice, I don’t remember ever loosing a breath-holding contest: I can still crack 2 minutes! The frightening part of the test follows in the Professor’s office where I hear the outcome. Each time I take the test the result is a loss of about 5% of something known ominously as ‘Forced Vital Capacity’. I have consciously avoided doing the actual maths, but it seems evident that there are only so many times that you can take 5 away from 100. I’m sure it’s not quite that simple, but you get the general drift. I think I have a reasonably positive outlook on life, but this day that comes around with each season of the year knocks the wind out of me every time. There’s something cold and uncompromising about reducing health to a single number, and on this day my ability to view the future with faith and hope is most tested. I have one of these appointments coming up in a fortnight; just one of the many challenges the New Year will bring!

Another New Year is dawning for all of us, and I refuse to give lip service to vague sentiments about how ‘happy’ 2010 will be. I need far more than that to negotiate the path chosen for me; and I suspect I am not alone.

I am learning something liberating: the strength I need to face the demands of the year ahead doesn’t come through talking, but through listening. Each time someone tells me to be happy I feel a tiny reporach, a small wound of some sort, just like a pin prick. But when I find a moment of silence, peace and joy are almost always close at hand. My anxiety is never eased by talk or noise, it’s merely covered up. Speaking only for myself, the Solution is Silence. It’s when I shut up and listen that I discover an undeniable reassurance in my own spirit. It’s as though everything I need to know is hidden there within me. And mostly all I know is that all is well.

When we tell we may wound; when we listen we are healed. When we are telling we are often taking, and conversley it’s when we listen that we are giving a great gift. For the first time in my life I am becoming unafraid of silence in conversation.

My New Year’s resolute solution is to listen. To people, to my own heart, to nature, to God.

As my screaming nine year old daughter sank her teeth into my right ear I had the thought that Christmas Day wasn’t going quite as planned. Like you, we had put much time and effort – not to mention expense – into planning this one day of the year; and like other Ozzie families we were hard at work experiencing Peace and Goodwill. My nine year old has Down syndrome, and I guess the excitement of presents and food and fizzy drink and visitors and sisters and lollies and rellies and lights and candles and bonbons and Christmas was finally all a bit much. We were sitting around the tree, opening presents, when our little girl taunted the puppy just once too often. Maybe even the dog had had enough Christmas cheer. The Puppy leapt snarling at my little girl, my little girl leapt screaming at one of several available big sisters, and I leapt (a sort of slow leap) to the rescue.

It’s not the first time we have had one of these awful ‘meltdowns’ and it probably won’t be the last. We know what to do; how to get her to her bedroom, how to endure the storm for a few minutes, how to look for the tiny glint of humour in her eyes that is the sign that she is wanting to leave anger behind and melt back into the giggling, affectionate girl that we know so well. And so a few minutes later she and I were comforting each other, nursing our wounds, and exchanging earnest assurances that all this would never happen again.

As a pastor and counsellor I have spent hours talking with people who struggle through Christmas. No one sets a place for depression at the Christmas table, but the black dog comes nonetheless. For those with grief in their lives, Christmas can be a too-painful reminder of loss. While most families thrive in the food and fun of the day, many find themselves forced together with people that they basically can’t cope with. But for me all this has been reasonably theoretical: my own Christmases through the years have been joyful, fun-filled family reunions.

But this year I spent much of Christmas Day in a wheelchair; and for the first time I felt just a little of what it can be like to have the Christmas Machine roll its wheels over you. I think Christmas works best for ‘normal’ people. In fact it’s designed by the vested interests of commerce and entertainment to fit snugly into the lives of those with the money, the good health, and maybe even the good fortune to celebrate ‘the good life’. From my new perspective, some 3 feet lower than last year, I have seen for myself just how intensely prescriptive Christmas is. It’s hard to shop when you can’t walk, and this continual state of ‘awesomeness’ is exhausting when life is uncertain. There are so many rules which must be obeyed. It seems as though every detail from the look of your home through to the tone of your voice has been scripted. But who made these rules? Who said that the celebration of Christmas should look and sound and smell exactly like this? On this one strangest day of the year we all behave the same way, do the same things, say the same words, and I have to ask: Why?

I guess you are expecting me to reveal my true identity and say “Bah Humbug!” about now. But I’ll keep going: I think that the Christmas Machine and the Message of Christmas are almost diametrically opposed. Christmas is so relentlessly external, while Christ is ultimately internal. Christmas embodies consumption, but Christ gave his body to be consumed. The sound of Christmas is loud, relentless, and brooks no opposition; Christ’s call is a still, small voice that is heard only by those who humble themselves before God.

Christ came for the poor, the lonely, and the heavy laden. Christmas has become a celebration of wealth, of friendship and the ease of life.

In the end I shrank back a little from the wheels of the Christmas Machine. The outwardness of the season has driven me inward. That’s not a bad place to go; and in the silence of detachment I was surprised to find a deep well of Peace and Joy.

Driving away from the Rehab Unit my Favourite Wife was wearing a highly inappropriate, ear to ear grin. She was very obviously thinking that because I now had a wheelchair she would finally be able to push me around!

Once we got the bulky contraption home – the wheels have to come off before it will fit it in our rather small car – I found myself quickly retracing very familiar steps. The first question was where to hide it! My family would soon be coming home so I tried frantically, but the borrowed hospital wheelchair proved far harder to hide than my aluminum crutches had been just 7 weeks earlier. Instead, I struck on a much bolder course! I had dreaded this day for a long time, not knowing when or if it would finally arrive. But the day had come, and it was proving more bearable and less intimidating than I had imagined. Courage seemed to be rising in me, I felt oddly galvanized by the task of engaging in the future. I decided that I would deal with my fear by telling the world. So instead of hiding the wheelchair I photographed it, and posted it on Facebook with a one word caption: ‘Bugger’.

I’m not at all comfortable saying that word! (In fact I’ve deleted it and retyped it several times). It’s not the way I speak, but it’s the right word this time. If I could say it out loud rather than just write it; I would say it with a smile. A grin in fact. I’d say it with a larrikin, knock about conviction. A bit like the Toyota add a couple of years back. A week out from Christmas this definitely isn’t the gift I was hoping for. It’s an unwanted intrusion into my world; but it’s also a challenge. A horse to be broken, a tool to be used. It’s not what I want, but I recognize what I need.

I’ve learned something about Christmas in this ‘gift unwelcome’. In a few days we will celebrate the gift of God’s Son, but for some 2000 years the world has largely rejected the message of Christmas, pursuing greed and self interest instead. Christ is what the world needs, but not at all what it wants. The message of Christ is one of self sacrifice, but our world celebrates with indulgence and excess as if to silence the voice that calls us to walk in Christ’s footsteps: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9).

I must confess that I haven’t tried the wheelchair yet. For two days we have been staring at each other in silent combat. There is a matter to be resolved between us before we can travel the road ahead: who will be in charge? We have been forced together by circumstances beyond our control, and we are unlikely travelling companions. Will I own the wheelchair, or will it own me? It crouches in the corner, trying to intimidate me. But I think I can see the edge of fear in its eyes. I’m almost sure I saw it flinch. I think I’ve got it beaten!

I found myself gazing toward a blue strip of ocean, feeling great contentment and joy in life.  The sort of joy that words can’t frame; the sort of joy I didn’t expect to find in a hospital.

Hospitals can be extreme or mundane.  On any day in hospital you might become acquainted with the gamut of your room-mate’s bodily functions; or share the tea room with a family struggling with unbearable loss; or just silently pass the hours between doctor’s rounds.  My doctors had come to the fairly limp conclusion that, “You may get better, or you may get worse”.  Getting better sounded good; but in the Neurological Sciences ward you are surrounded by confronting examples of what the alternative might mean.

On this particular morning the early sun was warm and hopeful, the day was young and there was an undeniable sense of order in the world.  None the less, a niggling sense of guilt was invading my peace.  Uninvited doubts began to rattle around in my mind:  Is it right to be happy when life is precarious?  Are feelings of contentment, peace, even excitement, appropriate when people suffer beside you?  Can we laugh when others are weeping?  Should I rejoice when I might be dying?

Should I be happy?  Should – now there’s a dangerous word. I read once of a man who said he would have gone to church, but every time he stepped in the door he trod in a big pile of should! ‘I should do more of this’. ‘I shouldn’t say that’.  Such statements smack of imposed obligations, rules we don’t want and possibly don’t even believe. The word should is man-made and devoid of all grace.

Where did my un-ease come from?  Perhaps the word dis-ease holds a clue.  Just a year earlier I was boasting of my good health and of my prowess at the gym.  But if one can take pride in health, then it’s very possible to be ashamed of illness.  Other niggling anxieties creep in as well:  Is this all somehow my own doing?  Do I deserve this?  Would stronger faith allow me to be healed?  What do I really believe?  If I had taken a different path at some point would this have happened at all?  Do I secretly prefer abdication of responsibility?  And worst of all: Is God disappointed with me?  I have tasted all these temptations, and on that morning these nameless fears were baring their teeth.

The window I was looking through had a curious feature: a thick rail of unknown purpose placed exactly at eye hight.  From where I sat there was actually very little of the bay to be seen, just a lot of railing.  For no special reason I leaned down a little to look again at the panorama that lay behind the railing, and at that moment glimpsed the tell-tale spray of water that might … if you’re very lucky … be a whale!  Sure enough a minute later two magnificent creatures breached, splashed and spouted in the distance, and continued a slow and playful progression down the coast for the next half hour.  It was God!  Immediately my anxiety was absolved and I was immersed in the presence of the Almighty.

I cherish those moments – and they come often enough – when ‘signs’ from the world around carry the very voice of God.  Ordinary events bear heaven’s stamp, and fill me with a clear sense of truth.  I remember a day in January ’07 when my wife and I had prayed earnestly that God would “show us a sign” to confirm His presence in a particularly trying set of circumstances.  Around dusk I was watching the trail left by a jet in the darkening sky.  Family members gathered as the trail continued to get brighter and longer; eventually filling a quarter of the night sky.  We were looking at Mc Naught’s Comet, the brightest comet to have been seen in 40 years.  To this day I am convinced that comet was there just for us!  And, no doubt, for a great many other purposes as well.

This is the thing: I know His voice!  There are many questions which have no answer; there are fears that conspire to steal.  But the peace of God is above them all.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).