God – James Roose-Evans

Presence

My view is that God does not intervene directly in human affairs: to do so would make us like robots. We are surely meant to meet the many set-backs that we inevitably encounter and learn from them. The Church’s teaching that God sent Jesus into the world to die an appalling death in order to redeem mankind, is entirely an invention of theologians! Jesus would have foreseen that the moment he began to challenge the way the Pharisees taught the Jewish faith he would be arrested as a trouble maker and executed, for Pontius Pilate loathed the Jews and had thousands crucified during his rule. Jesus, as a man, had to endure the terror of knowing what would happen once he was arrested, leading to an excruciating death.

The words of Jesus on the cross – ‘My God, why have you forsaken me?’ – have such a ring of truth. But, significantly, they were not his final words, which were, ‘It is finished.’ In other words, as he says elsewhere, ‘Abba, I have done the work which you gave me to do’. This should be our prayer too. God may not intervene directly, but God’s presence, nonetheless, surrounds and holds us: we are never ultimately alone. As in the words of the mantra I use: God is present; God is here; God is now.

Journey’s end

Shakespeare wrote that “Journeys end in lovers’ meeting”. After death we shall not only meet again those we have loved and who have loved us, but we shall encounter a love greater than any we could imagine – the love of God.

Stillness

‘Be still and know that I am God.’ By sitting still we become increasingly aware of another, deeper reality beyond this present existence, of a higher power, the divinity that shapes our ends. We must go with the flow!

Innocent

Innocence is not to be confused with naivety, but is a matter of remaining open to the freshness of life, of people, of nature – all of which grow out of the habit of sitting quietly, looking and listening. It is a quality that many young children have – though there is a danger that such innocence is quickly lost in the world of the internet. Always I am reminded of that small boy, whom I have quoted before, who said with great passion, ‘God is a feel, not a think!’ No wonder Jesus said ‘Let the little children come unto me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.’

The path

This is the final verse of my favourite Psalm (139), which I often use as a mantra:

O search me, God, and know my heart.
Test me and know my thoughts.
See that I follow not the wrong path
And lead me in the path of life eternal.

The continuing journey

Many people believe that at death, when we shed our physical body, the spirit is then freed to travel on. In other words, the journey continues, but now into worlds of unimaginable beauty, wisdom and wonder. Although we have no scientific proof of this, deep down, for myself, at the level of intuition, I have no doubts that this is so, which is why I have no fear of dying. Once, years ago, some words came to me in a meditation – which I had calligraphed by John Rowlands Pritchard and which hang on a wall in my bedroom: ‘God is an endless journey.’

Underneath

In George Bernard Shaw’s The Black Girl in Search of God, the central character says to an old man, ‘You don’t have to look for God as He is always at your side.’ When Shaw was writing, God was always referred to as masculine, whereas God is neither male or female nor a person. The closest that we can perhaps get is: ‘God is Love.’ It is a love that surrounds, embraces and upholds us. As the Psalmist wrote, ‘Underneath are the Everlasting Arms.’

We are never alone.

Easter eggs

Once, I was invited to take part in an Easter Egg-painting session. On my egg I painted the words ‘God is a broken egg.’ For the chick inside has no knowledge of the ‘without’, only the ‘within’. It is cramped in a tight, dark space and has no concept of the space and freedom that lie outside. Obeying a primal instinct, the chick begins to peck at the hard shell until it cracks, whereupon it discovers what lies beyond, and with it the freedom to fly. So it is in life; we constantly have to break the outer form in order to make a discovery and so move on. Only then can we embrace the totality of experience.

As Kaneko Shoseki observes in Nature and Origin of Man,

‘Let go of your fixed notions and feelings, indeed, let go completely of your present “I”. Original truth reveals itself only when we give up all preconceived ideas.’

Letting God in

Once we have overcome our difficulties with the word ‘God’ and learned to let God into our lives, the result can be dramatic. We may be faced with illness, a failure, a setback; but if we wait patiently and allow God to work within us like yeast in a loaf of bread, then the problem is resolved in its own way. We have but to let God in.

When the waters are rising

Once upon a time there was a huge flood. A man climbed onto his roof to escape the rising waters. A rescue boat appeared with a lifeguard in it, urging him to come on board.

‘God will protect me,’ the man replied, ‘I have lived all my life as a devout believer.’

The waters continued to rise. Twice more the rescue boat returned and twice more the man refused to climb aboard. The boat left to rescue others.

Eventually the flood engulfed the whole house. The roof disappeared beneath the waters, and the man was drowned.

In heaven he encountered God. Furious that God had not rescued him, he complained loudly: ‘All my life I have been devout. I have obeyed all the commandments. I have given large sums to charity. And the only time I asked for anything you abandoned me.’

‘But I sent a boat three times,’ God explained. ‘Why didn’t you get in?’