We knew that the refugee crisis was bad – the people drowning in the seas, the ‘jungle church’ at Calais, but sometimes it takes the death of one person, one beautiful child, to remind us of our common humanity, to turn the ‘Them’ into ‘Us’. Some images still have the power to change the world.
I believe that I have a muse, and that she lives in the shower.
I fear that what I have just written may put me firmly in the category of those who are utterly insane, or those who are arrogant enough to believe the world should be hanging on their every word. Or – more simply – ‘writer’, which is a combination of the two.
God is in dark, dark places. But not with an instant pick-me-up solution. Sometimes it seems He is doing nothing and that perhaps He isn’t there. The cries for help seem to bounce off the ceiling. Pain is painful, and no less so for believers.
But alongside the truth of suffering, we need to acknowledge the truth that God is good, and that He does good work in dark pits.
Unfortunately, far too many of us suffer because we think the questions mean we are not true believers. That if we had a real faith then even in the most tragic of situations we wouldn’t have any questions. That our faith would be unshakeable. Unbreakable. That’s the lie. I can’t help but wonder if the opposite is actually true. What if our questions actually reveal the strength of our faith rather than its weakness?
living in such close proximity to death had marked me. I woke up at night, sensing its heavy breathing on the back of my neck. I saw it everywhere I went: its inevitability, its steady, onward march. It will eventually take everyone I love. It will eventually take me. I paced the house. I felt anxious and afraid.
It’s easy to think that God was punishing me. That’s certainly the sort of theology that permeated my childhood. My depression, and the scattering of people from my life were one big judgement. I found a home in the wailing language of the Psalms.
She is my hero, because, like Job, she endures. We admire those who climb mountains and endure freezing temperatures, and history applauds them. But where are the records and awards for those who climb mountains of pain and isolation, day after day, for decades?
This group of women became the hands and feet of Jesus to me. I realized I didn’t have to try so hard. I didn’t have to strive. There was nothing for me to do because God had already done all the hard work. My life hadn’t been working because I was trying to do what only Jesus could have done.
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Tanya Marlow blogs on the Bible, suffering and the messy edges of life [read more]