Stairway Encounters

 

   
I like to sit on my stairs at home. It has frequently been a spot where I take a few moments out to be in an in-between space, a pause in the up and down, a narrow interlude to be neither here nor there.

Something about that midway ledge brings out the deepest honesty I have to offer God in that moment. I can think of several occasions over the course of the years when I have sat on the stairs with head in hands, heavy with ashen, burdensome thoughts and I’ve told God things like, ‘I can’t’, ‘I don’t see how’ or even ‘I don’t think I really believe that’.

But here’s the thing about a stairway - it’s a place of transition, we don’t stay there for too long. A ledge isn’t a place to be secure or to get very comfortable, the pause doesn’t last and there is an eventual shift back to movement, an interlude is always followed by the next acts of the production.

My most recent stairway experience was a head bowed low moment with thoughts that I would hardly have recognised as prayer. As I sat in the pause, my heart said, “I would really love somone to tell me that it’s all going to be okay, but no-one is going to do that are they, including you God because that’s not what you say’, and I vacated my ledge low in hope and filled with despondency.

A few hours later that evening, my phone pinged with a single message. My frame of mind almost made me miss the words right there in the middle of the text, despite the fact that there were even capital letters used to highlight it. A friend reached out with care and compassion to tell me, ‘it WILL all be okay.’

‘Did God just…?’

‘Have I just been told…?’

‘Did he really hear me say…?’


I’m still blinking in surprise!

But there were the words on the screen. An iMessage from God.

If we think those frank and honest stairway thoughts are hidden from or unknown to God, we are clearly mistaken. The fact that we are whispering them so very quietly in our inner world means that he must be awfully close beside us to hear them.

To quote from the George MacDonald poem, ‘That Holy Thing’

‘My how or when Thou wilt not heed,
But come down Thine own secret stair,
That Thou mayst answer all my need -
Yea, every bygone prayer.


That text message gave me so much reassurance that evening. The difficulty I was facing had not been removed but the emotional and spiritual heaviness was dispelled. Instead I had joy and delight at the unexpectedness of God’s response. I was given a double measure of presence. Not only did I receive comfort through the kindness of a friend full of empathy but also a remarkable and uplifting affirmation of God’s tender-hearted graciousness and presence.

Maybe next time we find ourselves needing a little while on the stairs, or wherever that may be for you, we will hold on to the knowledge that every thought and feeling, every word spoken or inwardly breathed, is heard by our Father who loves us just as we are.

May our stairway meetings be a holy thing.

God's Giant Box Of Felt Tip Pens

I read The Silver Chair again recently, the sixth book in C S Lewis’ Narnia series, so when I spied the Narnia colouring book in a basket at home, I popped it into my suitcase, along with a tin of felt tip pens, to bring on holiday.

While flicking through the pages one evening, I decided on a quote from the book I had just finished.  

'You would not have called to me, unless I had been calling to you.'

Aslan

The Silver Chair, C S Lewis

I began to fill in the letters and shapes with my pens - grey lettering with dark highlights, light blue for the myriad cloud-like shapes floating all over the double paged outline.

As I coloured, I wondered if it could help me pray. Might the rhythm of pen on paper ease away distractions, helping create space for focus in the same way as walking often does, the simple rhythm of placing one foot in front of the other - actions connecting the physical to the spiritual.

And in the space, a thought flowed from an unseen pen held by an unseen hand.

I could pray for God to colour in the shapes of people’s lives.

We all have blank spaces within us that are waiting to be brought to life by our artist God. Vast empty plains and small overlooked corners that exist without the joy of His colour. He has an immense palette of shades and hues that He uses to fill in the outline of us that he has already drawn.

He makes us in his image but God is not just a black and white outline. He may be like that in our own profoundly inadequate idea of him but it is not the truth. God is the fullest spectrum of light, emitting an array of colour beyond the imagination and he is making us to be more like himself in order to be a living exhibition of his glory!

There is simply no room for comparison and envy in such a truth. Each one of us, living in submission to being saturated by the colour of grace and love, can truly only respond with gratitude and worship. There is freedom to be found in knowing that God takes great pleasure in his work, that he deftly tints and highlights, blends and shades with perfect understanding of his craft in order to produce living artwork worthy of being given a place in his house.

It is a tremendous privilege to be chosen by him to personally receive the fullness of such masterful creativity within ourselves. It is also an honour to be a living extension of the work, to be visual representations of God’s extraordinary colour in the world around us.

Prayer is one way of joining him in his creative work in the lives of others. We are  invited to participate in this immense and beautiful imaginative work, a work that Jesus began during his ministry and that he continues today. It is the Kingdom work of pervading lives, places and moments with the colours of eternity, his will being done on earth as it is in heaven.  As the Narnia quotation reminds us, we call to God because he has already called to us.

The outline in my Narnia colouring book isn’t complete yet. It still needs work and time. It serves as a reminder that God’s work, in us and in the world, is ongoing. When I next pick up my pens, I hope that I remember to pray for his colour to fill the empty spaces. I hope that I remember to consider the depth and breadth of God’s work. It is on display continually everywhere and in everyone if we have eyes to see it and the willingness to accept the invitation to join with him in his work.

When you have no words for prayer.

A violent gust of wind snatches everything out of my hands before I can arrange it into any semblance of order.

A host of tiny letters dances through the air, flung hither and thither by the breeze, black marks printed on a grey page of clouds. Some scatter across the grass, others fly up into the swaying branches of a nearby tree where they catch amongst the bare twigs and riotously flutter out of reach. In the midst of the type characters, I watch whole words pitching up and down high above my head, dispersing chaotically, and colliding senselessly into one another. Dry leaves of paper are tossed into the atmosphere. Torn pages blow in every direction like small tumbling birds, wings powerless to direct their flight.

I stretch my arms out, leaping and grabbing in an ineffectual attempt to retrieve the jumble of letters, words and paper scraps but they lurch further into the sky, well beyond the reach of my fingers.

I shout in frustration but I am robbed even of wordless sound as it too is seized instantly by the wind and flung aside like winter debris.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot catch all the fragments whirling round about me.

If I could just gather them all together in one place out of this wind, I can perhaps begin to figure out how to stitch them into comprehensible sentences but the wind is far too strong. Everything eludes my grasp.

As I stand buffeted and bewildered, I suddenly notice the man. He is seated on the ground beneath the tree. I hadn’t seen him before, having been too busy in my frantic activity. As he sits, he calmly plucks letters and words from the air, capturing them in his hands. The wind whips his hair across his face and as he tilts his head sideways to shift the strands, he looks up at me and smiles. He doesn’t speak, but simply carries on effortlessly catching words. My words. One by one, the pieces are carried by the turbulent currents towards him and into his hands where they remain, no longer affected by the wind.

The scene ends there, just a brief flare of the imagination. A thought that drops into my mind as I attempt to pray one day. An attempt that feels just like chasing words in the wind. 

The cross winds of life can make prayer a difficult and sometimes impossible task for us. How do we order everything that we are thinking and feeling into words that can be called prayer?

What a relief to picture Jesus smiling his reassurance to us.

‘It’s all right, I’ve got this. Stop trying so hard and instead trust what I can do. I’m out here in the wind with you even though you didn’t notice me. I am your prayer maker.’

It’s OK that we don’t know how to pray sometimes. Jesus will write our prayers for us. He knows us far better than we can ever know ourselves anyway and he knows that when stormy winds blow in our souls, we need his help. We can stop being so hard on ourselves. We can stop reaching and struggling. If you don’t have words for your heart, then simply bring your heart. Jesus takes the heavy sighing efforts of our souls and makes them pure expressions of prayer..

‘Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, 

God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along.

 If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. 

He does our praying in and for us, 

making prayer out of wordless sighs, 

our aching groans.’

Romans 8:26 (Msg)

Perhaps when strong soul winds are swirling words beyond our grasp, the best thing to do is go and sit beside Jesus under the tree and rest knowing that he has it all under control. Wordlessly sit in a posture of prayer and allow his Spirit to suffuse us with peaceful reassurance. 

Take Heart Daughter

It takes a minute to figure out what I’m looking at.

Feet.

My nose automatically wrinkles in aversion to the men’s bare sandaled feet in the picture but I keep looking.

A hand.

If I’m looking at feet on the ground then why can I see a hand?

The brace position for Christians

So the first week of September is just what I thought it was going to be. September will never take me by surprise. I will never begin the month with an expectation of calm transition from holidays to work. It’s a bumpy ride.

Brace, brace, brace!!!

We’re feeling the impact of early mornings with a new school routine involving buses, loaded schoolbags, traffic jams and diversions. New timetables, homeworks, and the dreaded backing of books.

First week nerves, mishaps and mistakes all make for family tension. Throw in extra late nights at work, meetings at church or school, music lessons, social get-togethers, Bible studies and we’re going to have four tired people by Sunday and a week will have flown by.

One Sunday to the next Sunday.

And I suddenly realise that it was on Sunday that we assumed the brace position.

3 thoughts on prayer

 ‘Go out deeper,’ he said. ‘Go further out into the waters of faith.’

The words of the preacher were a call to me that night long ago and a restlessness of spirit was stirred up. As I put my foot forward beyond the shallows, I could feel the tug of the ocean tide. The vast, immeasurable ocean that is God’s love draws us and I think restlessness is sometimes a gift of the Spirit.

Ordinary Sanctification

I got a text message from a friend today. Right in the middle of an ordinary day, doing all the usual ordinary things, someone said,

I’ve prayed for you.

Meeting in Prayer

The last chapter of my friend's thesis is finally written and as she collapses in a heap, mentally and emotionally drained from years of writing toil, we her friends gather round and pat her on the back with a hearty well done. It is a group sigh of relief and we celebrate with pretty patisserie desserts, cocktails and the essential cup of well brewed tea. We have journeyed with our friend in her labour of words, bringing her to God for inspiration, free flowing thoughts, clarity and calmness of mind.

As I was reading a borrowed copy of Sheldon Vanaulken's 'A Severe Mercy', I found these words of C S Lewis with whom Vanaulken had corresponded,

 

'It is a sweet duty, praying for our friends. I always feel as if I had had a brief meeting with you when I do so: perhaps it is a meeting, and the best kind.'

I sent these words to my thesis writing friend during the intense final leg of her marathon and from then on many of our text messages to each other included the words, 'meeting you in prayer'. Vanaulken and Lewis weren't even on the same continent as they met in prayer and as my friend, barely post-thesis, prepared to move back to Canada with her family, we would soon find ourselves in the same situation. 

There are times when we grow tired and weary, overtaken by circumstances and holding our arms up in prayer is almost beyond us. Is there any way to be a better friend to one another than taking up the sweet duty of praying for each other?

In God's Kingdom miles don't matter. We meet in the throne room of God the Father, side by side, accompanied always by Jesus in whose name we pray. A meeting of the best kind indeed because we meet together with him, the one who we eagerly look forward to meeting face to face some day.