A Fourth Pause in Lent - Honest to God

Welcome to this week's Pause in Lent - you'll find all the participants in the list on my sidebar. This week my post is very much inspired by thinking about what I read in 'Pause' posts and comments last Sunday and Monday. You have had me thinking all week, friends! I have a horror of the kind of 'Christianese' or 'Churchianity' that has participants pretending that everything in the garden is lovely, 24-7, because they know Jesus. Hang on..? This is the Jesus who is about to get crucified, as far as the church calendar goes, isn't it? Why should everything be permanent grins and all-my-problems-fixed when our own Lord had one of the hardest lives we can imagine?

It isn't really a surprise, because I know and like so many of the bloggers participating, that this year's Pause is NOT an 'isn't life cute and cuddly with the Lord'-event. That's not a criticism, it's a compliment. Like the writers of the Psalms in the Bible, we are brave enough to tell God when we feel terrible. We are brave enough to tell fellow bloggers too. We don't feel we have to keep up the pretense of a perfect life in front of God, our friends or, perhaps especially, ourselves.Looking at posts and comments from last week, one of us feels 'a fraud' for even participating, one of us is flat-out furious with God following a tragic bereavement and one of us (OK, me) is fighting against gritting her teeth and snapping at her children due to numerous family stresses.

So we have anger, anxiety and a sense of hypocrisy, and we're telling it like it is.

I'm so proud of us!

I'm not at all suggesting that we are, or should be, happy to leave it at that and stay there in our wretched states. But if we're not prepared to say it, to challenge God with it, to challenge ourselves with it, then we'll never face it at all.

My very good, randomly-chosen, Lent book is by Gerard W. Hughes. He talks a lot about how we think that the ordinary every-day stuff, and the nasty unkind stuff, should be kept from our prayers.

Quite the opposite is true, he points out! He says: "The facts of our life are not 'distractions'. The word distraction is from a Latin root meaning 'to draw apart' or 'drag away'. The facts of our lives are not distractions: they are the place, the only place, where we can meet God, for that is where he is with us. "

I have no idea if I can encourage my fellow bloggers with these words, but I truly feel that when we are honest to God about the hardest things and strongest feelings, we are getting to a place where we can know him better. The sweet and cuddly stuff, whilst part of reality, is only a part, and knowing God in the tough times and telling him the truth about how we feel allows us to let him in, deeper, to our thoughts, feelings and concerns.Reflecting on all of this, as I mowed our 'lawn', gave me the chance to re-assess the writer of one of my least favourite Psalms. The Psalmists really told it like it was. Here's Psalm 137 - oh yes, it starts out all famous, but how many of us can tolerate the end:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land? If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.

Remember, LORD, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. “Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!” Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. j

Well that ending makes me sick. But it's not necessarily an emotion endorsed by God, it's just one honestly expressed by a writer who had seen evil things (probably those very things) done to his own people. And then he had the courage to say it to God. I pray that we will have the courage to tell God what we are really feeling and thinking, in the confidence that he can handle it and that it will help us to move on to a better relationship with him.