What is Truth?

A summer day dawns. Perfect blue sky stretches above a verdant green countryside. Across the field towards the wood, a layer of mist hangs, neither touching the earth nor touching the sky. 

The mist obscures a section of forest; I can see above and below but there is a section which lies hidden behind the filmy white.

What is truth?

Pilate asked Jesus, and although Jesus is The Truth, Pilate just couldn’t see it. There was a mist clouding his vision.

Perspectives distort and cloud our perception of truth. We argue over politics, over religion, because we see as if through a glass darkly – things are distorted and obscured in our earthly understanding. 

But while we have mental agility and acuity it behoves us to exercise our minds and our spirits to understand as best we can, with the help of God. Because a day may come when the mist settles more permanently over our minds.

Elderly folk who are slipping into dementia often ‘confabulate’. That is a word new to me but one which I am using more and more in relation to a dear loved one. I am hearing her declare things to me day by day and because I know some of them are definitely not true, I then begin to question the rest. For her, she is speaking the truth. She is not trying to lie or pull the wool over my eyes. She is constructing a scenario on the hoof, as she speaks, which she herself may not remember in a few minutes. She is confabulating.

There are horrors going on in our world right now, more horrors than usual, and the truth is obscured. It is lost in the mist over Ukraine, with the shooting down of the passenger plane and the terrible death wreaked on innocent people. It is hidden in the historic and thick thick mists hanging over Gaza and Jerusalem, where it seems everyone confabulates to justify their own actions. 

Jesus knows the truth. Jesus is the Truth. One day this mist will lift and we shall all see his face, and we shall see clearly. We will know the truth, and the truth will truly set us free.

In the meantime, we walk by faith. We walk, trusting in Truth, trusting in Jesus, trusting that he can negotiate the way through the confabulations and out the other side. It is not a case of the blind leading the blind, but of Perfect Love leading the beloved.

That’s you. And me. Have a great day, resting in Jesus despite the mist hanging over so much of the world.

In the Wake of the Cross

Silent walk behind the cross this morning, trudging the familiar trail through Banchory. Stopping at several wide-spots along the way to hear the story again. To imagine the rejection, the loneliness, the courage and the pain of Jesus on that first Good Friday.

Silent walk. Time to reflect. To think about his sacrifice. To recognise that feeling worthless is self-indulgent and untrue; why would Jesus have died for me, or for you, if we were worthless? In the words of the ad for a beauty product, he died ‘because we’re worth it’. 

Sometimes that is hard to see. Where we see the problems, Jesus sees the potential. He made each one of us. He knows what is inside of us. He knows how to draw the best out ... if we just let him.

Spend some time in silence today. Think about why Jesus did it. Why he left his glory in heaven to live amongst struggling, poor people. Why he allowed himself to be pinned to the cross. 

Because, in his eyes, ‘we’re worth it’. I know, hard to believe. But it’s true not because of who we are, but of who he is.

Silent walk. Time to reflect on my own path. There are things which obscure the road ahead. Is it straight? Does it turn sharply, or bend gently up ahead? Where are the potholes? Where is the ditch? 

Uncertainties fog my vision and I just don’t know. If I allow it to, fear could grip me and paralyse me into inaction, negating faith.

I won’t allow it to. There is no fear in love, because perfect love casts out fear. And what I see on the cross of Calvary is perfect love. Perfect love named Jesus.

Where there are problems, there is potential. Opportunity for me to see God act in amazing ways. I am open for that. I am alert and watching, my hand firmly in the hand of Jesus as I expect him to lead me through the fog. 

I refuse to stand shivering in indecision. I will walk forward, one step at a time, into a future full of hope and joy. 

All because of what Jesus has done on the cross, memorialised today, on Good Friday.

Thanks be to God.

Faith or Fear

Beginning of a new year. Thoughts begin to coalesce around resolutions, or at the very least, a few goals and aims for 2014.

You too?

We all face a choice. Step into the new year full of courage and faith, trusting in God, or creep into it apprehensive of what each day might bring.

It sounds like a no-brainer. Who wants to creep through life half-alive? And yet that is the choice we so often make, unconsciously perhaps.

So for me, I'm going to deliberately put my hand into the hand of Jesus every morning and prayerfully step out in faith.

There is no room for fear in love. Perfect love drives fear away, and Jesus is that perfect love.

The Cape Part II

             

Walking Dusty up the West walk at Crathes castle this morning, I found myself trawling through the anxiety list yet again – the various individuals in the family and their needs. 

Then I remembered the cape, of which I wrote a few days ago. Heavy, lead-lined, impenetrable, needing to be dropped at Jesus’ feet. Too heavy for me to shoulder.

Today that cape transformed into the cape of a matador. It was light and colourful, easy to dangle from a finger and swish flamboyantly round my head or tantalisingly in front of a charging bull.

The meaning I’ve derived from this, which I believe God gave me, is that having given those anxieties to Jesus already, I can leave them, crumpled as a heavy cape on the ground. He has not taken them away from me, though, but has given them back to me as the blessings that they are. Each one of the people I have concerns for is much loved, and a real blessing in my life, and so Jesus has taken the weightiness of the concerns, reassured me that he has them under control, and given them back to me to enjoy. I can trust him to be answering my prayers, and that gives me confidence that there is no need to fear. Keeping connected to Jesus enables me to enjoy my loved ones with exuberance, with abandon, and without a sense of dread or foreboding or anxiety.

They are in his care, the apple of his eye.

There is no room for fear in love, for perfect love casts fear aside. Loving Jesus, loving others, creates trust. 

I like the lightness of that matador’s cape. Thank you, Lord.