Lord, let us not pick at the scabs

Are you wounded, are you scarred? People who have suffered the violent loss of loved ones will tell you that such memories never seem to fade into the long term memory banks - they remain forever lodged in short term recall. So, the slightest trigger brings to mind the violence and the loss, as though it were happenening all over again, today. 


Is this our lot? How did the ancient martyrs' families cope? How did church society manage in the midst of the ten awful persecutions under the Roman Emperors? Women lost their husbands, sons their fathers, parents their children. The manners of deaths were vulgar, unspeakable. John Foxe chronicled but a few of these in 1544. My own heart gets raw just READING of my forebear's sufferings. These are the heroes of antiquity, upon whose broken shoulders we now stand, here in the supersonic technobeat of 2011.


How did they cope, move on, remain witnesses? How shall we? Are we "more than conquerors"? Do we know whom we believe? Is there hope beyond suffering and inconvenience and death? In Christ there is! Having just read Robert Hughes "Culture of Complaint" (a polemic against the grumbling new age which turns us against each other, and ultimately against ourselves), I am all the more resolved not to magnify my scratches into massive flesh wounds.


And so, I am equally determined not to revisit past disciplines and dealings of God. Oh how vital it is to remember that our worst experiences and enemies are nothing other than tools in the Carptenter's hands! Revisitation and regurgitation...that's just picking at scars and scabs. "Don't scratch that scab!", is not just the command of our earthly parents - it is also the call of God. Forgetting what is behind, let's strain towards what is to come, knowing that even the bad stuff is only that Woodworker getting us ready for heaven's mantlepiece.... And armed with such confidence, living in between the times, could we be those madmen who burn their ships in the harbor and traverse the dark scree with daring and vigor again?


I listened to the Choral Evensong service at St Pancras Church in London. The prayer of the Rev A Pitts resonated a loud "Amen!" in me, when I think upon what I DO HAVE, not what I might have lost or suffered....

"We thank you God, for the gift of faith, for our Lord Jesus Christ, our risen and ascended Lamb: through whom our humanity is lifted into the heart of God;  through whom we receive the gift of the Divine Love. Christ our life, you are alive throughout the beauty of the earth, in the rhythm of the seasons, in the mystery of time and space. Christ our life, you are alive in the tenderness of touch, in the heartbeat of intimacy, in the insights of solitude. Christ our life, you are alive to offer re-creation to every unhealed hurt, to every deadened place, to every damaged heart. You set before us a great choice, therefore we choose life. The dance of resurrection soars and surges through the whole Creation. It sets gifts of bread and wine upon our tables. This is grace. Dying we live, so let us live."

Nick