Life after Lockdown (Romans 8:18-25)

Throughout Romans, Paul highlights some of the tensions faced by Christians living in the world. 

For example, the tension between having new Holy Spirit given desires but still having an unredeemed body afflicted by sin, famously leading to the anguished cry:  

I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do (ch.7).

Cosmic Lockdown

In chapter 8, he highlights that such tensions extend even to the level of the Cosmos itself. So even though the new age of freedom & liberation in Christ has broken into the world through the Gospel - the Universe itself remains in bondage & decay. The consequence of which is felt in our lives every day.

One of those effects can be to generate a huge sense of frustration in us. Christians ‘taste’, through the Holy Spirit, something of Christ’s good rule in their lives. Yet the ‘full meal’ and the complete satisfaction that would bring remains elusive.  So we live, all too aware (painfully at times), that our greatest hopes are yet to be fully realised.

God’s Lockdown

The middle section of Romans 8 paints a very vivid picture of that strain. We continue to inhabit a creation, including our bodies, that is still subject to decay & death. It’s a creation where things go wrong, malfunction and fail. It’s a universe longing to be free but is held back & suppressed under the ongoing ‘lockdown’ of God Himself (v20).

It is a state of affairs, Paul is very aware that can be particularly testing and wearisome for Christians. Indeed, it can even cause them to doubt their faith. Is the Gospel really true in promising new life and blessings? Why do my greatest hopes often seem so out of reach? Am I really a child of God when life seems such a challenge and feels so messy?

Which, of course, is why Romans, supremely ch.8, is written - to encourage & reassure us as we wrestle with this tension.

Our current ‘Covid-19 Lockdown’ is a microcosm of such frustration. It’s a living reminder of how tiring it is to live in state of limbo and restriction. Even after just a few weeks and despite the relative comforts many of us enjoy – many are getting bored by the smallness of life, its limitations and restricted routines. Many feel fatigued and worn-down by the confinement and lack of stimulation. Others are understandably anxious about the constant threat lurking out there to their security and health.

Getting back to normal

Not surprisingly then, most of us are longing to get back to normal. For the day when we’ll be able to go further than the local park and visit somewhere more interesting than Aldi - whether that be the thought of climbing some remote hills, or walking along a beach, going out for meal or flying abroad and exploring a foreign market.

We want to be able ‘to do life’ without the worry of harming others or being harmed. Of getting back to work without the inconveniences and worry of financial loss or economic calamity.

And oh! – to have the physical human company again of separated friends and family. To sit around in the same room, to share a meal, and greet each other with a hug.

The lifting of our Covid-19 lockdown will be a great day but, as Romans 8 reminds us, the greater Cosmic Lockdown will still be in place. Our lives will still be restricted by our frail bodies and we’ll continue to contend with a cursed and dysfunctional world. Our work and best efforts will still be subject to uncertainty and decay. And those we love will continue to be separated from us (death is not reliant on Covid-19).

Life after Cosmic Lockdown

So, as we long for the lifting of our Covid lockdown it’s a reminder to keep longing for Christ and His Return. Because only then will there be the final liberation from all that binds and frustrates us. Only on that day will there be complete:

Liberation: freedom from sin, no more hurt and no more hurting;

Restoration: the reversal of decay & decline, no more loss;

Reunion: no more tears, no more separation.

But best of all, we will see Jesus and be like Him. We will experience, finally and fully, life lived in the inexhaustible joy & blessing of God. The ‘full meal’ - satisfied forever!

This is our true hope, so wait patiently for it (v25) - the great and ultimate lifting of all Lockdown.

Psalm 20 - Praying for Leaders

"Praying for Leaders" Psalm 20 (Psalms for the isolated) from Greenview Church on Vimeo.

Psalm 8: Pt.3 - Jesus (4 min Reflection)

Psalm 8: Pt.2 - Humanity (5min Reflection)

Psalm 8: Pt.1 - God (4min Reflection)

A message in the mess (Joel & the Coronavirus)

The Prophet Joel & Coronavirus 

Strange Days! Unprecedented!

‘Has anything like this ever happened in your days…? [1]’

The mess

A huge shock to the system, coming out of the blue and leaving a whole nation reeling and bewildered. All the more disconcerting for God’s people, already a faint shadow of their former glory. The last thing this already depleted people needed was another assault on their viability and religious life.

Yet there they were – engulfed in an unfolding social and economic crisis. The cause 2,500 years ago was a plague of locusts – an uncontrollable and devastating force [2]. Tiny creatures, able to lay 60,000 eggs in 40 square-inches of soil, whose young could crawl in their millions up to 600 feet a day – leaving absolutely NOTHING in their wake.

The effect was to shake the very foundations of society. Even the normally most oblivious and cushioned were compelled to take notice of it [3]. From top to bottom no-one could escape its far reaching consequences.

Most perplexingly of all for the people who called themselves ‘God’s people’ was the impact on their worship. The economic ramifications struck at their ability to make Temple offerings and maintain the structures of regular (indeed God commanded) ministry [4].

The message

In 2020 the books explaining the story of Covid-19 and its effects are doubtless already being written. They’ll be full of medical detail, analysis of governmental responses, reflections on globalization and predictions about its future social impact. There will be many practical lessons to be learnt – but what about the spiritual ones?

For ancient Judah, the prophet Joel was adamant that there was a message in the mess – a message from God Himself.

Now we are not ancient Israel, so we must be wary of ‘going all Old Testament’ in times of crisis. The health and well-being of the ‘land’ is not a direct barometer of the Church’s spiritual condition and we must be very careful not to simplistically conflate the two.

Nonetheless, just as God was the commander of the locusts [5], every virus is his foot soldier and he determines their paths. His ways are never arbitrary but always purposeful. He is the God who speaks in every circumstance if we have ears to hear him.

So what might the message be….

1.     Life is fragile and you are not in control

The practical blessings of our C21 ‘Western’ world are many and obvious. Technology, medicine and prosperity have given our generation a freedom from fear and suffering unrivalled in history. The danger, however, is that this lulls us into a sense of invincibility or hubris, all the more if we enjoy decent health and stable employment.

Covid-19 is a stark reminder that the tipping point between calm and chaos is very finely balanced. Just as the locusts came seemingly from nowhere – so our lives and even society can be quickly overturned. It’s a reminder to be humble, to remember our creatureliness, and to remember who is really in control.   

2.     You need a bigger hope

We can be thankful for government and those God-ordained structures able to mobilise resources and help mitigate the effects of a threat like Covid-19. Yet for all the effort and billions of pounds spent many individuals are still going to lose their jobs, lose loved ones and even their own life.

If our hope is anything less than God, it will let us down. There is nothing in this world, we can anchor ourselves in, that circumstances can’t sweep away. If your ‘security blanket’ is your money, the financial system can beggar you overnight. If your comfort is your abilities or status - then sin, crime or circumstances can take them all. If your ‘life back-stop’ lies in any other person then death will ultimately crush it.

Only God is big enough to guard your soul in this broken and afflicted world. 

3.     Stop, and start seriously engaging with God

Joel’s people were no doubt confounded by the idea that God might be behind anything that would stop their religious activities. After all, surely that’s the one thing God would want to continue.

But what if those activities had become a surrogate for real heart relationships with God? Maybe not for everyone, maybe not even the majority – but for such significant numbers that God was moved to press the ‘pause button’ on his own people.

Joel’s message was a call to return to the Lord, not outwardly but inwardly– ‘rend your heart and not your garments [6]’. The coming weeks will be a test of this – will we take the opportunity to seek Jesus afresh in our lives? Will we have a sense of urgency to engage with God personally, pushing beyond a reliance on inhaling the prayers of others and living off third party devotions?

Will we see the coming weeks as a holiday from church or will we mourn its loss? Perhaps this is a God given moment for us to repent of all the ways we have taken our fellowship for granted.

May our response be to plead with God to restore us again, and to be renewed in our love for Christ and our dependence on Him.    

Return to the Lord your God,
    for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
    and he relents from sending calamity.
Who knows? He may turn and relent
    and leave behind a blessing [7]

---

[1] Joel 1:2

[2] 1:4, 6-7; 2:6-9

[3] 1:5, 16-17

[4] 1:13

[5] 2:11

[6] 2:13

[7] 2:13-14

The Creaking on the Stairs - 4 Reflections

The Creaking on the Stairs (Christian Focus, 2019)

Mez McConnell

It wasn't a book that I wanted to read - I'm the kind of person who changes channel when the News reports on an abuse story. But I did read it for a number of reasons - firstly I know Mez (so thought it would good to be able to say I had), secondly Safeguarding is such a huge issue for churches that no-one in ministry leadership can side-step it, and thirdly because the prevalence of abuse begs a Christian response.

I won't try and summarise the book, others have done that and reviewed it helpfully elsewhere (see links below). My purpose here is simply to add my recommendation and in doing so outline four big impressions the book made on me.

1.       The Reality of Human Depravity: there is no shortage of examples of cruelty and wickedness perpetrated by one human being upon another in our world - so I guess we should be used to it. Nonetheless the book brought home again just how broken and inexcusably sinful humans can be. It was the gratuitous nature of the abuse that was most shocking, people weren't acting under orders - it was needless and unprovoked. But more frightening, as Mez points out, is the fact that everyone of us sits on that spectrum - whether it's petty selfishness or barbarism – if the potential of our sin doesn't scare us we haven't understood it.

2.       The Resilience of Human Beings: victims of abuse are often horribly damaged by the experience. Mez’s story of his descent into drugs and crime is one such example. Yet there is also the amazing capacity of victims to function despite the abuse – I don’t mean without effects – but despite the abuse they do what they need to do in school, when the visitors come round, they get on with the ‘normal stuff’. Victims, Christian and non-Christian, hold down jobs, look after others, get on with life – despite the wound in their souls. There is something extraordinary about this - and a reminder that even the most sorted people might be carrying a terrible burden inside them.

3.       The Nihilism of a World without God: the book is very honest about the mystery of such suffering in this world and avoids any cliched or trite responses to it. But as perplexing as it can be for a Christian to respond to abuse, the alternative - that this world is essentially a meaningless merry-go-round of arbitrary events with no meaning and no purpose – is surely the final insult to victims of abuse. The ultimate conclusion of such a worldview is that you have no point, your suffering has no point – in the final analysis you don’t really matter and your experiences are worth even less than that.

4.       The Vastness of the Gospel: in the face of the worst human suffering and loss it's common to say that nothing can ever make up for it and there can be no complete recovery – and of course in this life that is undoubtedly true. But as Mez points out, it's not eternally true - there is something bigger than even the worst human suffering, there is something greater than even our greatest losses. In Jesus there is someone who looked full-on at all the unspeakable horror of abuse - who took it upon himself and swallowed all its deadly pain and consequences. It sounds too good to be true, too good to believe – but that is the vastness of the Gospel – there will be no victims in heaven.

I’m grateful for Mez and for a book I didn’t want to read. It disturbed me and challenged me, but in the end made me even more grateful for a Saviour who suffered abuse, who understands abuse and who alone can provide eternal healing for the abused.

Reviews 

https://fiec.org.uk/resources/the-creaking-on-the-stairs 

https://www.challies.com/book-reviews/the-creaking-on-the-stairs/
https://www.9marks.org/review/book-review-the-creaking-on-the-stairs-by-mez-mcconnell/