Silence: A poem

A while ago now, I was with a group of friends when one of them complained about the silence. This started a train of though and the first stanza of this poem. It is about the fast pace of present day life - not really leaving anytime for contemplation and reflection.

Silence

What is this silence we sit in,
To hear that dreaded drop of pin.
Oh for murmuring music,
And that ever present life filled din.

Oh for noise to drown that voice,
That voice, accusing from within.


In this mad and rushing world
Where silence is so rare.
To be entombed therein,
That doesn’t seem so fair.

To hear that ever droning note,
The voice within declare:


“Halt and stop and stand and stay,
Listen long and hard this day.”
Now; unwanted prompting,
Calling, wouldst thou go away!

Wouldst thou voice, fall silent!
Reluctant, let I have its say.


I hear that long forgotten voice,
That fought so hard to win.
That voice who tells me right from wrong
And how to live therein.

Give thanks for quiet, to hear that voice,
That voice accusing from within.

God is good!

God is good! That seems like a true statement, a rather obvious statement maybe, but it is something that we all need to remind ourselves of from time to time. It is very easy in this troubled world to forget this simple statement. That is one of the reasons that, as Christians, we live as part of a community. So that when we forget God’s goodness someone can remind us of it; maybe with a personal testimony of the goodness of God.

I have such a testimony to tell. In September I started to train to become a Maths teacher, knowing that teaching was a worthwhile and stable job. However as time went by I realised that I wasn’t enjoying it. After thinking and praying it over for a week I decided to withdraw from the course. So at the beginning of November I found myself with out a job. This doesn’t sound like a very promising start to a story telling of God’s goodness, does it?

Anyway, concurrent with this lose of my job I was also preparing to take my final exam for my doctorate – so I had plenty to keep me occupied. About a week after I decided to give up the teaching I received an advert for a job at the university I’d attended – a job I was qualified for, in a general sense (it wasn’t in my area of research but close enough that an application wouldn’t be rejected out of hand). I applied for the job which started in January but didn’t hear anything, so I applied for another similar job at a different university. Since then I haven’t seen any other positions at universities which have interested me to apply.

I passed my PhD! This was certainly evidence of God’s work, no way did I deserve to pass. Whilst still trying to work out how on earth I’d passed, I got an email from the second university I’d applied for offering me an interview. A couple of days before I went to the interview I final heard from the university I attended, also offering me an interview, a week later. Through out this time I was praying that God would provide a job for me, that he’d put me where he desired – but that this would also be somewhere local. I attended the first interview and although it went well, I realised that I’d made a few mistakes and I also met the other candidate and found out that his background was actually in the area that they were looking for.

Learning from my mistakes, I went to the second interview a week later. I’d spent more time preparing, and although I was called to go to the interview half an hour earlier than I was expecting – I felt a great peace through out the whole thing. It helped that I new the interviewers, but that doesn’t fully explain how relaxed I felt. Anyway I left the interview knowing that I had done my best and that it was in God’s hands now – whether he preferred me or one of the other candidates in this position.

The next morning I woke up to an informal email – saying that they had offered the job to another candidate with more relevant skills, but it was a close thing. If the other candidate rejected the offer then they would gladly offer the position to me. They would keep me informed. This was a few days before Christmas and I realised that I wouldn’t hear before the new year, at the earliest when the university re-opened. I tied up all the lose ends, cleared my desk and went home for Christmas. I continued to pray that God would, in his mercy, give me this job, knowing that there was nothing that I could do.

After Christmas and the new year I still hadn’t heard anything more from either of the jobs. So I emailed the place where I’d had the first interview and was told that, as expected, they’d offered the job to the other candidate. It seemed that I’d got neither of these two jobs, so I started looking again for jobs, however nothing really struck my eye. I even signed up for an agency – and have been waiting for them to call me to talk about what opportunities they knew about.

This morning, I woke up to find that I had a missed call from the agency. I called them back – they were busy but would call me back in a bit. Whilst I waited to hear from them I checked my email. It was then that I found out that I had been offered the job at the university I’d attended, the second interview. I found out that the person they had initially offered the job to had turned it down in favour of another position. I accepted the job – in the place I desired.

God heard my persistent prayers, and when it was out of my hands, he gave it to me, as a gift – one I didn’t deserve. God is indeed good! Hallelujah!

Goodness

What does it mean to be good? Is it simply not doing things that are wrong or is it more than that? This question comes out of a series that we are doing at church at the moment on 2 Peter 1, on characteristics that we should aspire to have.

“…make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.” 2 Peter 1:5-9

So, what is this goodness that we should seek to add to our lives? It is here listed as a virtue, which means that it can not simply be the absence of a vice. That is, goodness is not simply ‘being good’, not doing anything wrong, but rather has a proactive nature that replaces something which is bad with something desirous. Simply put, goodness is not simply the absence of badness.

We do have a model for what goodness is, and that model is Christ. When Jesus was called ‘good teacher’ he responded thus

“’Why do you call me good?’ Jesus answered. ‘No one is good—except God alone.’ ” Luke 18:19

So we are to seek to become more like God in this, to become good as God is good. Specifically the word here translated goodness is ‘αρετε’ in the Greek, which means (according to my pastor) ‘moral characteristics worthy of praise’. So we are to add to our faith moral characteristics which are worthy of praise.

Can we look at our lives at the moment and say that our character is worthy of praise, as God’s character is? I certainly can not, and it is a high thing to aim for, but that is what we are called to do. Remember that ‘with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible’; it is only through faith that we have a chance of adding goodness to ourselves.

A Pessimistic Christian?

This morning at church we were looking at developing as a Christian. At a list of characteristics that we should seek to grow in as we continue our walk with Christ.

“make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.”
2 Peter 1:5b-7

However I believe that this list is not exhaustive. I think that we can find other traits which we should seek after, and ones we should try and banish from our lives. In this post I shall be looking briefly at pessimism, is it a trait that we should desire, one to be avoided or simply one that has no bearing on the working out of our faith?

The last part of this question is perhaps the simplest to consider. Every character trait has an impact on who we are, are we generally happy or melancholy, loving or hateful, introverted or outward looking. Every part of our character determines what we are most likely to do in any given situation. An extravert may be uncomfortable in a room on his own and get up and seek out company, whilst an introvert is much more likely to remain where they are. Thus every single facet of our personality will effect how we perceive the world and live our lives. To live our lives for Christ means that every aspect of them must be brought before his throne with willingness to be changed in order to be more like him.

What does a pessimistic view of the world really imply? A pessimist generally sees the worst in any situation, saying that their endeavours are bound to fail, that no matter how promising something looks at the moment it’s bound to go wrong in the end. There are two things that I think are wrong with this view of the world. Primarily a pessimistic Christian can not truly believe in an all powerful God who loves them. To see every task as a failure before it is even failed denies God’s power and love, after all we are told to “bring everything before him in prayer and petition”. What is the point of prayer, if God does not listen? If you deem your task a failure do you demand that God gives up on it too? Is there no expectation of intervention?

Secondly, we are told to live for this day. Not “to worry about tomorrow”, by saying ‘this task will fail’ in the heart, is one not really saying ‘I know what tomorrow will bring and that will be failure’? Even Christ did not know the date of his second coming, how are we then to know what will happen tomorrow?

To summarise: pessimism is liable to lead to a belief that only I have an impact on my life, both its successes and failures and to worry about the future rather than living in the present. I hope that I have managed to convey what I believe about the necessity to deny the pessimistic cravings within all of us with out causing any offence. If that is not the case than please accept my heart felt apologies.