Sometimes I wish I could give me a good shake, and after that I would like to shake up some of the folk I know. But we can’t change ourselves; - only God can do that as we submit to Him. Even less can we change others, and again, only God can do that, but not on our instruction!
Perhaps my intention to write a Blog at least 3 times a week was an impossible dream, and perhaps being disappointed with me is a natural outcome, but I still have Great Expectations as to what God will do in me, and even through me, because I have laid urgent requests before the throne of His Grace.
Some of the recent distractions have been concern for others, and Proverbs 14:10 comes to mind. Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy.
We can try to empathise; we can try to advise; we can offer support and sympathy, hands on or off. We can rejoice and give praise, or join in commiseration. Words, or acts of comfort can do much, but can’t change minds, or mind sets. Only God can do that, and He responds to prayer, in His time.
Proverbs 14:13 is a reminder of our mixed moods. Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in grief.
But aren’t we made for ups and downs, like the troughs of waves. Without the movement of waves, movement of what is on and in the waves is also stopped. It is good to be on the crest, but to rise from the trough again entails effort. Not to make the effort could lead to drowning in the depths of depression or doubt.
I am reminded of comments by Screwtape, a senior demon, in his letters to nephew Wormwood, a junior (“The Screwtape Letters” by C S Lewis). He has explained that because Wormwood has seen his “patient’s religious phase dying away,” this is no cause for celebration. Humans go through undulation in every department of their lives, - interest in work, affection for friends, physical appetites, all go up and down. Periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. He goes on to explain the tactics of the Enemy, (God) by pointing out the difference in their desires. While the demonic forces want to absorb the human’s will into their own, and assimilate them, God wants a world full of beings united to Him, in lives qualitatively like his own, but yet distinct.
“And that is where the troughs come in,” he writes. “You must have often wondered why the Enemy [God] does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most unmitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them or assimilate them, will not serve.”
As Screwtape continues his assertions, he concedes that God gives protection to His children in the early days of their commitment, but sooner or later He withdraws a little, “if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs – to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the kind of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best.”
Does this make sense to you, as it certainly does to me? It is most certainly in the down days that one clings more passionately to the Rock, and is most grateful to The Anchor preventing us from being swept away.
Screwtape confirms that the more the demonic forces can interfere with the will of humans, the better, but is insightful in his closing words. “He, [God] cannot “tempt” to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
Keep on keeping on, my brothers and sisters in Christ, and remember with me, The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18
It comes to pass – The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; He delivers them from all their troubles. (Psalm 34:17) In His time.
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