"Fanfare" by Colonial Parkway

  
  
"Fanfare" by Colonial Parkway


Composition copyright J. C. Bailey (2010)

Demo created with:
Fender Telecaster through Zoom GU7.1tt effects unit
Washburn Bantam bass through Line6 Pocket Pod effects unit
Apple MacBook Pro with Apple GarageBand software
Percussion and synth loops supplied with GarageBand
Guitar and bass loops created with GarageBand
Lead guitar played live
Keyboard patches supplied with GarageBand but played live through laptop keyboard

NO PIT IS SO DEEP... (Romans 8:31-39)

  
NO PIT IS SO DEEP. . .  

(Romans 8:31-39)  

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 

Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 

Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 

As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,  neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

  
Over the last few weeks I’ve been teaching my Year 9 pupils (13-14 year-olds) about the Holocaust – the unspeakable tragedy in recent history in which up to six million Jewish people and around four million others are believed to have died as a result of the deliberate policies of European governments.

My students experience mixed emotions during this series of lessons: they are regularly torn between horror, morbid fascination, and an uplifting sense of the courage and endurance people can be capable of when their world falls apart. And the part of the learning experience that always grips them is a powerful and moving film called “The Hiding Place”, which is based in the autobiography of Corrie ten Boom.

As the story opens, Corrie is running a large network of Christian children’s clubs, and works alongside her father Caspar and sister Betsie in the family business – a watch and clock repair shop in the Dutch city of Haarlem. When the Nazis take power in the country and start rounding up the Jews for deportation to the death camps, the Ten Boom family's faith leads them to form a Christian underground movement, using their home, their shop and their many contacts around the city to smuggle Jewish fugitives safely out of the country.

Of course they know from the outset that it will only be a matter of time before they are caught, and that in all likelihood they will die at the hands of the Nazis. And indeed they are soon betrayed, and taken off to concentration camps where every one of the family except Corrie herself pays the ultimate price for their rebellion. But the amazing thing about this story is that even the teenagers who watch the film come away from the end of it uplifted rather than depressed. Because while it naturally has harrowing moments, it is a story not of defeat but of victory, not of despair but of dynamic hope even when things seem hopeless. And the key to the film, the recurring message that comes through time and time again, is the passage of Scripture set out above.

These exact verses are the theme of the Bible study the family is working on together as troops gather outside their home, and it is just as a Nazi officer breaks down the front door that Caspar ten Boom is reading aloud these inspiring and timely words of comfort: “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor demons, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Of course the family need to keep this magnificent thought with them as they are separated from their loved ones, intimidated, starved, beaten or worked to the death from exhaustion. But the miracle that unfolds as we follow Corrie and Betsie's experiences in the Ravensbruck concentration camp is that the more they suffer, the more they are convinced that there must be a higher purpose to their suffering. Their hope rubs off onto others, expanding the borders of the Kingdom of Heaven, as coincidence after apparent coincidence reinforces the evidence that God is at work even in the hellish confines of Ravensbruck.

There are at least three levels on which these awesome words from Romans 8 were given meaning in the story of the Ten Boom family:

• Firstly, it was the knowledge of the unconquerable love of God in Christ Jesus that challenged them to risk their lives for others in the first place, and should likewise challenge each one of us to show our love to others in our homes and workplaces.

• Secondly, it was this same knowledge of unconquerable love that gave them hope and a sense of peace throughout their own ordeals of suffering – a thought that may help those of us here to transcend whatever painful experiences may be present in our own lives.

• And thirdly, it was this self-same confidence in Christ’s unconquerable love that enabled Corrie to look back on her experiences without bitterness, and over the rest of her long life to travel the world, visiting over 60 countries, preaching a message of hope, trust and (above all) forgiveness.

As you read these words, struggling with who knows what hurts or resentments, it is my prayer that you may clearly visualise Christ’s body broken for us and his blood spilled for us, and that you may feel an overwhelming sense of his loving, living presence. And as you feel him draw close to you, may you be given the same strength that was given to Corrie and Betsie: to take a risk for the benefit of others, to triumph over pain and loss, and freely to forgive as he has forgiven us.

Finally, if anyone does find these words an encouragement; if their implicit challenge to show Christ’s love to others leads to a change of path in our lives; if their reminder of his presence helps us to find peace in our darkest hour; if their power to heal our memories lifts off our shoulders a long-lasting burden of anger, then God grant that we may tell others. Our stories of the power of the living Word of God to change lives have extraordinary power to draw people towards a saving faith of their own.

That was exactly the realisation that Betsie ten Boom, came to in the last days before she died of cold and exhaustion in Ravensbruck. It was her last words that inspired her more famous sister Corrie to the lifelong evangelistic ministry that she embarked on after the War, and these words were a direct response to the verses from Romans 8 that had inspired them: “We must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us because we were here."
 
 

Stacy Grubb: A new artiste headed for stardom

HURRICANE by Stacy Grubb
CD and download (Amazon, iTunes, eMusic, Napster)

Stacy Grubb is poised to make a massive impact on the folk/country music scene. Behind her pert image and vivacious personality lurks a deep Christian thinker, a gifted song-writer, and an outstanding singer who is already able to command studio support from ace musicians and backing vocalists. The end result is a perfectly balanced album: thoroughly informed by bluegrass without being a slave to it. By turns haunting and exuberant, it is sonically beautiful from start to finish. Thoroughly recommended, and I can't wait to hear the results of her current work-in-progress.

A neglected way to inner healing

  
This is a theme I can speak on from painful but ultimately rewarding personal experience, and one that cuts to the very heart of our relationship with the living God: "Forgive us as we forgive others." Or, as Jesus himself put it in the prayer method he personally taught to his followers, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

In good preaching tradition I am going to make three points:

• Firstly, we all need God’s forgiveness;
• Secondly, we need to forgive others; and
• Thirdly, if we forgive others, then God will both forgive us and heal us.

We all need God’s forgiveness

OK, so we all need God’s forgiveness. It sounds obvious, doesn’t it, to anyone with any kind of Christian background? But it’s not always as obvious as it should be. Psalm 36 tells us bluntly that the wicked man “flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin”. In other words, Satan and our human vanity are constantly conspiring to make our actions seem more reasonable than they really are - constantly blinding us to our sin and our need of forgiveness. I want to share a frank snippet of my own past here.

Back in the mid-eighties, my first wife demanded a divorce. I was devastated; my career went off the rails, my social life fell apart. I drifted from day to day in sorrow, pain and anger that she could do this to me, not least because everybody, even her family, told me it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t until three years later that in desperation I asked God where I was going wrong, and he showed me the truth. The truth was un-confessed sin. I was responsible for getting into a marriage that was bound to fail from the outset. My wife was young, emotionally disturbed and rather anti-God. To marry her, I’d ignored advice of fellow Christians and stopped going to church rather than listen to them. As the marriage went downhill, I’d neglected to pray, become frustrated with her violent temper, and let it show in my attitudes. In other words, although I had tried to hold the marriage together, I shared responsibility for the damage it had done to both our lives. And in putting all the blame on her – in failing to confess my own sin – I’d been keeping God out of my life.

Of course I saw later that God had been with me all along, gently steering me back into fellowship. Nothing in the end can stand in the way of God’s love for us. But the sins that we don’t confess are like a barbed wire fence between God and us – a terrible barrier that can all too easily stop us experiencing his loving presence in our lives or sharing his peace. And the moment I said, “Sorry, Father, I’ve been living in rebellion. Please forgive me, and help me put my life back together,” that was when the long process of healing first got under way. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Most readers will already have heard those words from 1 John; many churches use them regularly in their worship times. But it wasn’t until God gave me the grace to say, “Lord, perhaps I’m not as innocent as I think I am. Show me the truth, even if it hurts,” that I was able to confess my sin and claim his promise of forgiveness.

So that’s the first point: Not just that we need God’s forgiveness, but that our sins aren’t always obvious to us. We rely on God’s Spirit to show us where we’ve sinned and need forgiveness. The second point is this: If we want God’s forgiveness, we need to forgive others.

We need to forgive others
Every time we say the Lord’s Prayer we ask for forgiveness, but there’s a proviso:
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

"Can that be right?" I can imagine you asking. "Will God really only forgive me if I forgive others?"
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

"But what about that senior manager who told lies and ruined my career?"
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

"OK, Lord, but what about the swine that ran off with my partner? Surely you don’t expect . . .Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

"And what about my first wife? Look, Lord, I came clean and confessed where I went wrong. Isn’t that spiritual enough for you?"

[Please read the following line aloud, and ignore others in the room if they look at you strangely] 

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.


Don’t just take my word for it. Listen to the words of the Lord’s Prayer. And if that isn’t enough, listen to Jesus’ teaching about the Unforgiving Servant. Do you remember the story? A certain servant is in hock up to his neck. He’s let off a massive debt by the King, only to have a fellow servant thrown into prison for non-payment of a trifling sum. And what does the King say to the unforgiving servant? “You wicked man! Shouldn’t you have forgiven your fellow servant, just as I forgave you?” And the King has him thrown into the dungeons until he can repay every penny – something he can never do. And Jesus says, that’s what God will do to you, unless you forgive others from your heart.

Scary? Yes, it is. But the point is, we’re all sinners. The Bible says that all have sinned; all have fallen short of the glory of God. Unless Jesus Christ had died for us on the cross, we’d all be facing eternal death, the good and the bad of us alike. And when God himself suffered so much to forgive me, what right have I to continue holding a grudge against the colleague who got me into trouble, or the partner who deserted me, or the unknown figure in the crowd who broke into my car? It is hard to forgive; we could never do it without God’s help. But when we forgive others, two vital things happen: First, we show the sincerity of our own repentance. Second, we prove in a way that could never be forged that we belong to Christ. It’s then that Christ accepts us, and that we ourselves gain forgiveness through his death for us on the cross.

I know this is challenging stuff, but the good news is this: If we forgive others, then God will forgive us. And what’s more, he’ll heal us.

If we forgive others, then God will both forgive us and heal us

Forgiving others is very hard. It defies all our human instincts. But when we trust God with all our pride and our pain, remarkable things can happen. Do you remember what I said earlier: that my own healing started when I said sorry to God for the sin of my broken marriage? Well here’s something else: Don’t think I’m boasting – there’s nothing especially spiritual about me – but my healing was completed when I forgave my former wife for the hurt she had caused me. I’d long since accepted that the breakdown wasn’t all her fault, but forgiving her was still hard. It took a lot of time and prayer, and it was all God’s grace, not mine. But forgiving her was a turning point in my life.

We tend to think that things should happen the other way round, don’t we. You know... “Only let God heal my pain and humiliation, then I can start to forgive and forget.” And of course we do need a measure of God’s healing before we can even think about forgiving those responsible for our suffering. But God seems to like it so much more the other way round. I guess that’s why Jesus said, “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who ill-treat you.” After all, which prayer is sweeter in God’s ears? “Lord, give me healing”, or “Lord, help me to forgive”? A time comes when we need to forget ourselves and pray for the ability to forgive. And the miracle is this: As God answers our prayer and forgiveness blossoms in our hearts, so the barriers fall. He breaks into our lives with the power to heal our pain and take the sting out of our memories. When I finally prayed for God to forgive my estranged wife the wrong she had done both him and me, and to give her his peace, that was when the final burden of guilt and pain and sorrow was lifted from me.

Now, I’m not making light of other people’s burdens. There may be some reading this who are carrying painful memories, and perhaps very recent scars, that go beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. But whatever the scale of our hurts, one thing remains true: Only our Creator God can heal us on the inside. The best Christian pastoral workers and counselling experts know that the priority is to focus not on our own feelings, but on Jesus Christ. And the key to inner healing is to let Jesus into every possible recess of our hearts and minds. All too often, it is either in failing to confess our guilt, or in hanging on to our anger and resentment, that we shut him out.

Remember when Jesus quoted Isaiah’s prophecy in the synagogue at Nazareth? “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, and to release the oppressed.” Well, Jesus comes to us still, to loosen the chains of guilt and bitterness and recrimination that bind us, to set the prisoners free, and to bind up the broken hearted. And his first words to us very often these: “Repent” and “Forgive”. And very often, just as when he performed healing miracles here on earth, his words of healing are these: “Go in peace, your sins are forgiven.”

So to sum up: We all need God’s forgiveness, and we need to forgive others. But if we forgive others, then God will both forgive us and heal us. Because the one day we shall be with him in Heaven. And even now, as we forgive and are forgiven, we can claim a foretaste of that glorious future; an eternity in which the Bible promises that God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and there will be no more sorrow or crying or pain, for all these things will have passed away.

The World's Most Far-Fetched Conspiracy Theory?

  
Do you believe that a hidden individual or clique is secretly running the world, or at least plotting to take control? If so, who do you think it is? With global politics as hard to understand as they seem right now, there’s never any shortage of conspiracy theories to explain what is really going on and who is really in charge.  

• One perennial favourite is the U.F.O. conspiracy – the idea that the world’s governments are secretly taking orders from alien beings.
• One of the most popular and bizarre theories, with literally hundreds of dedicated websites, is that the world is controlled by the British royal family who are, it is sometimes alleged, intelligent lizards in disguise.
• And the theory that’s currently undergoing a global renaissance – courtesy of the blockbuster novel and movie “Angels and Demons” – is that the world is controlled by a shadowy cabal of financiers and scientists known as the Illuminati.

However, compared to the real truth, these crazy theories are surprisingly mundane. The shocking fact is that the world does have a hidden ruler, one whom most people know nothing about. He has extraordinary powers. The world isn’t the way he wants it (yet), but he’s gradually unveiling his plans for world domination, and he demands the total allegiance of everyone on the planet. Science fiction? No, the Bible.

The Hidden Ruler's name is Jesus, and his kingly rule is unveiled in the Christmas story as set out in Matthew’s Gospel.

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem.

We must understand who these men were, if we’re to make sense of the passage. The Bible doesn’t refer to them as kings whatever the old carol may say, and they are believed by many archaeologists to have been astrologer-priests from Persia. In the culture of the time that would have made them top royal advisors on national and international affairs. If you want modern parallels, think of the top diplomats of recent histroy like Henry Kissinger or Condoleezza Rice.
 

These tough-minded, unsentimental, highly informed political mandarins clearly knew that something extraordinary was about to happen in Palestine, something that would turn the world upside down. And so they came to King Herod's palace in Jerusalem asking,

Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.

I want to pause for a moment to reflect on how remarkable this is. Mostly, of course, it’s remarkable that what drove these tough, practical men was not just curiosity or the need for intelligence on a possible security threat, but the urge to pay him homage – in a sense to worship him. But I’ll come back to that point, because the other remarkable thing I want to point out is that for centuries leading up to these events the world had been waiting with bated breath for just this moment. The Jewish prophets had foretold Jesus coming hundreds of years beforehand, right down to the place of his birth. By the time Jesus was born, Jewish society was feverish with messianic expectations, and the promised Messiah even figured in the reckoning of those mysterious visitors from the east.

In fact, the only informed person of the day who seems to have been living in ignorance of these expectations was the Saddam Hussein of first century Palestine, King Herod. And how did he respond?

When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.

 We really do have to stop again here to ask the question, Who on earth is this Jesus? What was so special about the Messiah that a party of top ranking foreign officials was prepared to travel half way across the civilised world just to see him as a baby? And who was this baby that King Herod, who despite his status as a puppet ruler was still one of the most ruthless and feared tyrants in history, should fear him? What did they expect Jesus to do, these wise men and this one foolish man?

The Bible itself gives us a clue, and shows us how the two factions respond to the bombshell. When Herod sends his minions to find out where the baby is to be born, they come up with an Old Testament prophecy that tells us something dramatic about Jesus:

They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.” ’

These final words, “a ruler who will shepherd my people” summarise the meaning of messiahship with unmatched power and economy of words. While the living Jesus actually far outstripped any pre-Christian understanding of what the Messiah would do, these few words are all we need to answer every one of the questions I asked a moment ago: Who is this baby? What will he do? Why do the wise men pay him homage? Why are Herod and all his cronies so frightened?

Firstly, this prophecy points to the fact that Jesus will rule as king; and not any ordinary king but God’s special king: the King whose birth in Bethlehem was promised hundreds of years beforehand. And that means that Jesus is in charge. His will will be done, whatever the world thinks. He is the standard against which all other authorities are to be judged and sentenced. And so his birth in Bethlehem sounds a dire warning to those who exercise power in selfish, oppressive ways. It was the writing on the wall for Herod, but it also spells out the fate of oppressive rulers today – whether dictators, drug barons, or simply ordinary people who oppress others through selfish choices in their everyday life. And not just people but families, organisations and national governments. The very idea of kingdom has been redrawn in the light of Jesus’ life and work.

No wonder foolish men like Herod still try to hunt Jesus down and eliminate him. We can see it in China today, where the authorities are bitterly persecuting infant churches. They cannot win, because God is moving in those tiny bodies of young Christians the same way he was moving in the baby Jesus. Even as an infant, Jesus rules as king. No rival throne can stand up to him. Herod knows that, and quakes. The wise men know better – they kneel at Jesus’ feet and offer him the best they have to give.

Secondly, these words - from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people – tell us something about the kind of ruler Jesus will be. He does not rule like a human king, lording it over people, using them to satisfy his capricious whims, e.g. sending them to the front line to die in his service (as even David, the most godly king in history once did). Jesus rules as king in the way a shepherd rules the flock – firmly but gently, defending them against predators, searching out the missing, making sure there is always food, water and a healing touch. And as Jesus himself explained, the perfect shepherd will lay down his life so that his precious flock may live. This passage thus points to the main reason Jesus was born – not just to teach and embody kingdom values, but to die an undeserved criminal’s death. And in so doing so he would take the punishment deserved by every other person who has every lived, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. That is Jesus’ idea of ruling as king.

We take up the story again as the wise men arrive at the place where the infant Messiah is staying:

When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

No wonder wise men and women, like those visitors from the east, still make the journey to kneel at Jesus feet, pay him homage, and lay the best they have to offer as gifts at his feet. I wish I had the space to unpack the symbolism of each of those three gifts – the gold, the myrrh, the frankincense – but it’s better if I concentrate on explaining how the fact of Jesus ruling as king affects each one of us:

Firstly, it’s fashionable today to dismiss the supernatural element of the Bible. Well, I am a great lover and respecter of science, but here is an anomaly to remind anyone who thinks science has all the answers that the world is still a pretty mysterious place. There is no serious question that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. And as to the prophecy concerning Bethlehem, there is no doubt that it was written several hundred years earlier. Now, that inconvenient truth may seem either miraculous or just plain unbelievable to someone brought up in today’s secular culture. To a believer, however, this point is not particularly striking – it’s just one more tiny strand in the enormous body of evidence that there is a real God acting in human history and moving it towards an unimaginable climax. And there’s no doubt in my mind that the birth of Jesus is the pivotal moment in human history – the start of the long final chapter which will end with Jesus ruling visibly and irresistibly over the whole universe as king. And I find it really reassuring in these confusing and troubled times to know that there is a God who plans ahead, a God who tells his people what is going on, and who says to the hardened unbelievers, See, I am here, and there is plenty of evidence around if you are just willing to look at it with an open mind.

Secondly, there’s a timely message for anyone reading this who has not yet made a firm decision to follow Jesus. Because this story shows the two possible ways of responding to the fact of his kingship. I say two ways, because the supposed third way of simply ignoring him just doesn’t work:

1. You can be like Herod: you can attack Jesus, attack the church, attack faith in general. You can do all in your power to maintain the illusion of being in control just as Herod did. You can even pass laws like the UK’s impending Equality Act which effectively make it illegal to follow your religious conscience.
2. You can be like the Wise Men. You can make the journey to Jesus, kneel at his feet, and submit to his rule as shepherd and king.

Christmas is a classic time for people to reassess their own feelings about Jesus. Even after 35 years, I’ll never forget the unbelievable euphoria of the first Christmas at which Christ himself was real to me. And it doesn’t take much of a prophetic gift to know that there are people reading this for whom this Christmas could have that same heart-filling excitement in store.

If you feel Christ is calling you to let him take centre-stage this Christmas, there’s a very easy first step you can take. Below is a prayer that could be prayed by anyone who wants to accept Christ as king for the very first time. If you pray these words, however quietly, God will hear you. And Jesus promised time and time again that if you accept him as king, he will become a loving friend with the power to transform your life.

The wise men from the east went on their way overwhelmed with joy. It’s my prayer that everyone who reads these words will have a real encounter with King Jesus this Christmas, whether for the first time or the thousandth, that will bring joy throughout the season and for all the years ahead……….

PRAYER
Heavenly Father, thank you for sending Jesus. I’m sorry I’ve spent so long without recognising him as my rightful king. I no longer want to be like King Herod, ignorant of Jesus’ kingship or resenting his challenge to my own rule. I want to be wise like those Wise Men from the East. I ask you to give me the humility to kneel before him. And all the good gifts you have given me I lay at his feet. Lastly, Father, I know now that Jesus died so that I can be forgiven of all my sins. Wash me clean now in the power of his shed blood, and fill me with the spirit of Jesus so that under his royal authority I can live as a new person…..


If you prayed that prayer, however simple a step it may seem, it really is a turning point in your life. But please don’t leave it at that. Track down a trustworthy Christian to help you find the next step forward in faith. And please let me know so that I can give thanks and pray for you.

Hope and Patience: How to Grow Old Gracefully

   
The promise that Romans 8 holds out to old codgers like me

If God is so loving and so powerful, why does he allow suffering? It's the oldest and biggest question in what is called the "philosophy of religion". Indeed, it's such an obvious question that my 12-year old students can always be trusted to think of it spontaneously when we start exploring life's "ultimate questions".

It is a question that just cannot be evaded by anyone, believer or unbeliever, whose life has been touched by bereavement, illness, violence or a broken relationship. I remember it bouncing around in my head when my first marriage broke down, and again when one of the closest friends I have ever had, a devout Christian, died from illness in his thirties a few months after getting married: If God is as loving and as powerful as I believe, why does he allow things like this to happen? As the philosopher David Hume put it, is it that he is incapable of stopping it, or is it that he just doesn’t care?

Of course neither of Hume's despairing explanations is valid; the Bible offers a third alternative. But the strange thing about the Bible’s handling of this crucial question about life is that it doesn’t do the obvious. Unlike philosophers down the ages it doesn’t try to offer a logical justification of suffering – at least not one that would convince a militant atheist that there is a loving, all-powerful God. What the Bible offers instead is a series of vivid snapshots, culled from very different cultures over a time-span of nearly 2,000 years, of people and communities whose lives were transformed through discovering at first hand the infinite love and the infinite power of God in the most unexpected places – and most unexpectedly of all, in the midst of suffering.

The supreme example, of course – the ultimate expression of love, and the fulfilment of every picture of suffering in the Bible – is the image of God himself suffering and dying on the cross in the person of Jesus Christ. The fact that God’s anointed Messiah, God himself in human form, should have to suffer and die, is the conclusive answer to every human question about the necessity of suffering in this life – if even God himself suffers, then what right has any human to protest the unfairness of it? But the true wonder of what God did in the past, through the cross of Christ, is that it procured for those of us who believe a future from which all suffering will be erased.

This is where Romans chapter 8 comes in. To my mind it is one of the most hopeful passages in the whole Bible when set against the suffering that is an inevitable part of this life, because it contrasts the horror of pain, persecution, decay and death with the glory that those who are in Christ are certain to inherit. And verses 23-25 offer special reassurance and hope to people who, like me, are only too well aware that their bodies are decaying.

We are not making light of other more extreme forms of evil like infant mortality by noting that the ageing process can seem a particularly cruel affliction. I’ve had quite an easy life, and already I’ve already experienced the impact of high blood pressure, diabetes, gout and back pain on my own ability to achieve what I would like with the rest of my life, and the process is all one way. I eventually came to be healed of the loss of my friend, but my decaying body will not be healed this side of heaven. As most readers will know, the Bible teaches that the inevitable consequence of human sin is death, but as Romans 8:21 reminds us, that sentence of death manifests itself throughout our adult lives as a bondage to decay. It’s rarely a case of living our life and then dying. We start to decay almost before we’re fully aware that we’re alive.

But the Bible also offers us hope. To begin to open up what Paul says to us with his marvellous economy of words, let me draw a light-hearted parallel with what many of us will have experienced at work. One of the most pressured times in teaching and many other professions is in the run-up to the holidays. In teaching the last week before the long summer holiday is worst of all: as the great day approaches student behaviour deteriorates, academic progress slows down and the pressure to get all kinds of outstanding jobs finished before the six-week break can become unbearable. However, if there is one time in the whole year that you can take it all in your stride, grit your teeth and get through it, it is that last week of the summer term. And why? Obviously, because of what you have to look forward to; you know that if you have focused on getting everything done, and steadfastly put up with all the chaos and abuse of those final days, then, when that final bell goes at the end of the final period, you will make your getaway. You can live that whole painful and tumultuous week in the light of the guaranteed peace that is to come.

Of course this is a rather light-hearted comparison, and I am not being glib about the terrible suffering and loss some people have to endure in their later lives. But if the pain we may have to get through in our final years as our bodies decay is more gruelling than a homespun illustration can possibly suggest, so too is the future we as Christians have to look forward to infinitely more wonderful. To see this underlying message in the verses we are looking at to day, we have to cast our eyes back to the beginning of the paragraph at verse 18 "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to revealed to us."

Do you see what the writer is doing? He is not trying to give a point-by-point explanation of precisely why God allows suffering. Nor is he joining the eastern mystics in pretending that suffering is in some sense unreal. He is admitting that the present is full of suffering. But he is also saying that these sufferings (however terrible they may be) are dwarfed alongside the glory that we have to look forward to when we have got through this last difficult period in our lives.

Indeed, the contrast between the bad present and the glorious future is so radical that Paul can compare the whole of the present order of existence to a mother’s labour pains: We know that that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now (verse 22). I was with my wife throughout my son's birth, and while I couldn’t share the pains I could see just how excruciating they were. And yet this was her 4th child, so she knew what she was letting herself in for, and still she was willing to submit to that suffering and get through the painful hours of labour for the sake of future joy, for the sake of the child we hoped for. And of course a successful birth is never guaranteed, but the message of Scripture is that in Christ our victory is assured. We can live with decay and all the sufferings of this age in certain hope of future joy and peace.

Now, a question that may be going through some people’s heads as they listen is, Is that enough of a comfort? Should Christians expect to share the sufferings of the present life with non-believers? There are some who have difficulty accepting that present suffering is as much on the agenda for Christians as for non-Christians; you may have encountered it if you have watched the miracle-centred religious programming on satellite TV. But if you want to see how crisply Paul the Apostle demolishes this spurious teaching, look at verse 23. He’s just said in v22 that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now, and as he goes on to say in v23: not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

There is some debate about just how these words should be interpreted, but what is beyond debate is that Paul did not see Christian faith as an escape route from the pain of living as part of a fallen creation. Healings may come – I have personally seen wonderful cases of release from suffering that I have believed to be the Spirit’s miraculous work – but his top priority is to give a different kind of empowerment: the hope that would enable a suffering or decaying person to make the most of life until they taste the sweetness of that guaranteed victory.

If anyone is afraid that I could be reading too much into a few words here, read on to verses 24,25: "For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."

I wonder how you use the words hope and patience. Let’s try hope. “I hope I win the jackpot.” “ I hope it’s sunny for the weekend” (a forlorn hope if the forecast says it’s going to pour with rain). We so often use the word hope in this vague, wishy kind of way. But when Paul talks about hope, he’s not indulging in mere wishful thinking that against all expectation things might turn out OK. On the contrary, he is talking about a positive, well-informed and life-changing assurance that even a situation that seems hopeless will turn out to be for the best.

And by the same token, when Paul refers at the end of the verse to patience, he is not talking about the kind of switched-off half-life you experience when you’re stuck at London Bridge station, idly killing time among the alcoholics and discarded fast-food wrappings as you wait for the late-night train home. Rather, it’s a spirited determination that, however long this present life may go on, whatever challenges it may entail, we will in Jesus’ words have it abundantly, using it to the utmost in his service.

In short, Paul is holding two competing impulses in the balance: eagerness for heaven and determination to make the best of this life. On the one hand, the hope that Paul talks about is the eager anticipation of a glorious future that is certain – the kind of impatience for glory that will make the temporary pains of life easier to bear; the kind of inner voice that says, “just this one last push and I’m home free”. On the other hand, the patience he talks about at the end of v25 is the kind of determined acceptance of life’s troubles that will keep us living life in abundance and doing our best for Christ however long it lasts.

Paul himself put this balance between fullness of present life and impatience for future glory in a nutshell in Philippians chapter 1: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain . . . my desire is to depart and be with Christ, but (for me) to remain in the flesh is more use to you.” A more recent Christian writer put it less eloquently but more pithily: We should live as if Christ were coming back tomorrow, and work as if he were not coming back for a thousand years.

So to summarise:

1. Suffering is real, and should be expected by Christians.
2. Part of the suffering, especially for people of my generation, is the slow decay that goes with age.
3. Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that we can look forward to as Christians.
4. This future glory is not some vague wishful thinking, but a thrilling certainty that should affect the way we  perceive our whole lives and all our sufferings – this is what I believe Paul means by hope.
5. The proper response to that hope is not just to switch off and wait for heaven, but to make the most of every minute that remains to us to glorify Christ, such that when heaven comes it is nothing less than the fulfilment of what we have done with our lives – that is what I believe Paul means by patience.

Verification 2

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