Friend of God

How does an acquiantance become a friend? What changes in this process?

In the Letter of James, during a discussion of the importance of 'action' accompaniying 'having beliefs' about God, James states that Abraham combined these two elements and thus became a 'friend of God'.

There seem to be plenty of people who hold opinions (beliefs) about God, but fewer who practice a faith. Might good evangelism thus have something to do with helping people move from acquiantance with (the idea of) God, to becoming friends with God?

Friendship of course involves matters such as noticing an initial commonality between me and another (beer-making, a love of art...); it them builds upon this by making time to discover more about the other (both the differences to me as well as the similarities). Finally it grows into common goals and decisions (small or large) about sharing a future, journeying together.

This final stage is essential. An aquaintance may have much in common with me, but unless our stories are somehow voluntarily allowed to interact with each other, such that we are mutuallly changed, then I think genuine friendship has not yet come to fruition.

If James is correct all of this would be transferable by analogy to the growing of relationships with God, too.

The Letter to James is, of course, not the only place in scripture when friendship with God is mooted. Famously John's Gospel describes Jesus as saying 'I do not consider you servants, but friends'.

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In the desert

There are times when things are going swimmingly...and then there are times when they are not. I notice that fairly often these 'not so well' times correspond to things being taken away from me:

Perhaps my work seems less interesting, and consequently this 'lack' has a knock-on effect on my identity: I become bored or listless.

Perhaps something I have been doing has finished or (even worse) been taken out of my hands by someone else. My resulting frustration is only matched by my sense of failure and loss.

Perhaps a friendship has ended in an argument, or maybe it has just slowly evaporated. And so I am left with a sense of hollowness, anger and disappointment.

These 'loses' take various shapes, but they all result in my diminution, my becoming smaller.

The natural tendency is (I suspect) to interpret these loses as weakness and failure on our part; something we could have avoided if we had been stronger.

However there is a different way to view these moments. These are the 'desert' times; times of stripping-away. They leave us emotionally naked and vulnerable, yearning for protection. And yet perhaps these are the very times when we might come closer to God, when we cast ourselves upon God because there is really nothing else we can do.

It may be that these ‘desert’ times provide for us surprising springs of grace. The weak and lonely times become the times of strength and solitude. A time of loss might just become the moment for growth in God.

“And the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness and he was tempted for forty days ... He was with the wild beasts and the angels looked after him”. (Mark 1 12:13)

Feminism

I keep coming across people who refuse to call themselves feminists as if the term were some dirty word. I even know a number of younger women who will roll their eyes at the sound of the word and claim it has nothing to offer them, that they are equal and need no 'special treatment'.
And yet day on day much of my ministry is among women mistreated by men.
Certainly I see men, too, but their needs are in most cases rather different: not the result of being 'used' or abused, but about their failure to find their place in the power-struggle of life's rat-race. Their suffering is often the quiter one of isolation; for many of the women though the problem is more obvious. It is still about bearing the brunt of harsh treatment at the hands of brutal men.

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Poem

Walking to Lauds
sun rising, and
the misty veil lifting
from bare trees.
The Office of Readings has been
done; silence endured, wrestled with,
emerged from.
Through lips comes opened breath
smoke of embers rekindled.


(Written at Worth Abbey)

I have a new phone.

I'm very excited. I'm not like this normally. Honest. It's just so addictive.

There are all these apps on it: I can link up my facebook account, my email account and my text in-box. There's this natty thing that I can press and when I point the camera at something the phone automatically clicks to the internet, finds out what it is, and where I can buy one.

There's even this great setting where I can make my location known to all my friends. I'm contactable and locatable 24/7. I really need never be on my own again. Not ever!

No more boredom. No more loneliness. Never have to be on my own.
No more moments of wondering what to do, or why.
Fully occupied. No more awkward stillnesses.
Total distraction whenever I'd prefer not to look inside and see what's there.

Never have to be alone with just myself. Never have to be still. Never have to look inside...

“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed” Mark 1.35.

The Third Advent

Advent is traditionally the season when the Church remembers the coming of God in Christ, and also looks forward to the final coming.
However some words from St Bernard of Clairvaux made me sit up and think. For he spoke of three advents...

"We have come to know a three-fold coming of the Lord. The first two are clearly visible, but the third is not. The third coming takes place between the other two.

In the first coming the Lord was seen on earth and lived among men.
In his last coming 'all flesh shall see the salvation of our God'.
But the other coming is hidden. In it the chosen see him within themselves and their souls are saved.

The first coming was in flesh and weakness.
The last coming will be in glory and majesty.
This intermediary coming is in the spirit and in power.

This intermediary coming is like a road leading from the first the last.
In the first coming Christ was our redemption.
In the last he will appear as our life.
In the intermediary coming he is our rest and consolation." (Sermon 5 on Advent)

Thomas Taherne

There's a superb new introduction to the Seventeenth Century English poet and priest Thomas Taherne by Denise Inge.

Among other gems two so far stand out from Thomas's mix of theology and poetry:

Heaven surely is a State and not a Place
To be in Heaven's to be full of Grace
Heaven is wherere we see Gods face.
(All Things, 9, p. 79)

and also his agument for why there must be life on other worlds:

The Earth is too poor a Cottage, too small a centre, to be the Single and Solitary object of his [God's] care and Love. For him that is Omnipresent and Eternal, to confine his Contentments to one little Spot, and leav all the Rest Empty and Desolate is unworthy of his Majestie and not very answerable to his Infinit Greatness.
(The Kingdom of God, ch. 22, p. 76-7)

There's a shorter version of Inge's introduction here.