The Trinity – A Poem

Written while contemplating Rublev’s Icon

There they sit eternally,
Encircling the table, the angelic three.
And yet not angels – Holy Trinity.

Here I stand in time, aware
Of love inviting me to join them there
And in their circling fellowship to share.

Entering, I hear them say:
“I am the end of journeying, the way;
Where, now arrived, you shall forever stay.”

Love again then speaks his word:
“This joy grows deeper as the bliss is shared.”
At that I turn and beckon to my paired.

Now she joins the ring of grace
And, side by side, we share the Three’s embrace;
Until we welcome others to this place.

Widening still, the circle grows,
As each brings others to the love that flows
And, in the bringing, true belonging knows.

“Limitless,” declares the Three,
“Love’s spreading circle has no boundary.
And in its compass one day all will be.

Neil D Booth © 2013 All rights reserved

Always? In all circumstances?

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thessalonians 5.16-18

This little trio of texts is one of my favourite pieces of Scripture and one that I have long had committed to memory. But as it came up before me in my Bible reading plan this morning, a great big question mark appeared over parts of it because I found myself trying to read it through the eyes of two people who are presently on my heart.

The first is a very public figure whom I have never met nor am ever likely to meet. She is Katherine Welby, the daughter of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, and she has recently been very open in the press and on television about a constant battle she has with depression – despite the fact that she is a committed Christian in a deep and genuine relationship with the Lord Jesus. Her condition became so severe last year that she stopped working, split up from her partner, and stopped going out. “I had lots of panic attacks … a permanent feeling of breathlessness, a permanent fear of what the day would hold and how I was going to get through; and a longing with all my heart to be anyone, anywhere or nowhere, just for it to end.” She even contemplated suicide. Does her dad pray for her? Yes, but despite all the prayer surrounding her “I am still miserable every day, most days … It’s ridiculous to be depressed in my position, but I am.”*

I can see how Katherine might well “pray without ceasing” for her depression to end, but how can she be expected to “rejoice always … and give thanks in all circumstances”?

The second person on my heart is Michelle Anderson – a theatre nurse who works voluntarily for Mercy Ships Africa – and who, through our  correspondence and blogs over a number of years, has become a dear friend of mine. In a very recent post on her blog**, she wrote this:

“I woke up sad today. There is no apparent reason for this sadness. I have struggled with melancholy all my life. It is one of the things about my character I dislike, even hate, a lot. I have no control over my moods. And when the sadness strikes, I can’t hide it. I’ve tried. I’m not an actor. Oh how I pray I were. I HATE being so exposed. I HATE that people I don’t know can see me so clearly. This is a problem I don’t know how to deal with here, living in community. I look around and see other people carrying on, consistently happy. Why can’t I be like them? This is clearly a weight I need to give to the Lord. I just can’t seem to figure out how?”

Again, how – when you are drowning in sadness and melancholy – can you “rejoice always … and give thanks in all circumstances”?

I can only speak from experience. I myself do not suffer from a permanent state of depression or melancholy, but I have gone through seasons of depression and sadness and despair. And my response to these verses at such times has been to remind myself that they are not about my feelings at all. They are a command to DO something and to keep on doing it regardless of how I feel.

The first command is to rejoice which, as I understand it, is to do the things that people who actually do feel joy do to express it. I am being instructed to put a smile on my face even if it is just a matter of flexing the right muscles. I am being enjoined to sing a song of gladness however much it sticks in my throat. I am being exhorted to stick my hands in the air and shout ‘Hallelujah!” even though it’s the last thing on earth that I really want to do. It may at first seem phony and even farcical, but I find it gets less so as you go on because the imitation rejoicing primes the pump so that real rejoicing starts to flow out of you.

Likewise with thanksgiving. Once, in a very dark hour in my life, a friend came to me in my despair and asked, “Have you thanked God for this terrible thing?”

I turned on him in anger: “Thank God? How can I thank God for this?”

His reply was to ask me another question: “Do you believe the Scripture that says: ‘In all things God works for the good of those who love him’ (Romans 8.28)?”

“Well, yes,” I said, reluctantly. “I suppose so.”

“Then,” he said, “because ‘all’ means ‘all’, it follows that God is working in this terrible thing for your good.  And if God is working in it for your good, then you can – and indeed you must – thank him for it. There is no going forward until you do.”

So I did – on my knees, through gritted teeth, and as a sheer act of surrender – but in doing so I found God’s life and peace pouring into me to not only console me but to change me.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Really? Yes, really! I can do it. You can do it. Anyone can do it … because it is nothing to do with how we feel.

*A video clip of Graham Satchell’s interview with Katherine on BBC Breakfast is here.

**Michelle’s blog is here.

Reality Check

We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 1.2-3.

There are three things – three qualities or characteristics – that distinguish any Christian from the non-Christians around him or her. In Greek they are pistis, elpis and agapē; in English they are faith, hope and love. Paul talks about them in 1 Corinthians 13.13: “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” And here, right at the start of his first letter to the young church in Thessalonica, he ascribes all three virtues to the Christians there – though he amplifies them in a very striking way. He qualifies them in a way that shows how the reality of each can be tested. In fact, his three descriptions provide each one of us with a reality check that is very challenging indeed.

First, faith.

I know your faith is real, Paul says to the Christians at Thessalonica, because I have heard of your work of faith (tou ergou tēs pisteōs).

As something of an introvert who is always happy to be in his study, lost among his books, I find my faith is always fearsomely open to challenge on these grounds. Personality-type is no excuse. Paul knows that if my faith is authentic it will find an outward expression of some kind however cloistered my life may be. It must. For, as James so forcefully points out: “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2.14-17).

OK – but what is a “work” – an ergon? Does it have to be feeding the hungry? Can it not be writing a blog … preaching a sermon? It depends. An ergon is simply a deed – something done; but in a Christian context it is more than that. It is something done as an expression of our confidence in Jesus and in his kingdom. It is something done that would not have been done unless we really believe the stuff we say we believe. Viewed from the outside, it will be whatever “do-gooding” my faith translates itself into in the real world of real and needy people in which I live from day to day.

Second, love.

Paul says he knows that the love that the Thessalonian Christians have is real because he has heard of their labour of love (tou kopou tēs agapēs).

Goodness me, how we misuse that phrase – “labour of love” …

“Wow,” we say to our next-door neighbour: “Just look at the shine you’ve managed to get on your car. You must have been polishing it all morning.”

“Yes, I have,” our neighbour replies, “but I don’t mind a bit – it’s a labour of love, isn’t it.”

Well, no it’s not – or not in the sense Paul is using the expression. Our neighbour is saying that the work doesn’t bother him – he doesn’t even count it as work – because he loves his car so much. But that is not actually what a labour of love is all about. What kopos is stressing is the costliness of work that springs from love. Kopos is toil to the point of exhaustion and utter weariness; and Paul is saying that work springing from agapē love is that kind of toil. Real love – agapē love – is stop-at-nothing love. As Paul says elsewhere: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13.7). But because of that – because agapē love puts up with so much and just keeps on going – it is exhausting love. It drains you. It takes everything you have to give and, as Jesus discovered on the cross, it bleeds you dry. But when people see love expressing itself in that kind of toil, they know that the love is real.

Finally, hope.

Paul says he knows that the hope of the Thessalonian Christians is genuine because he has heard of their steadfastness of hope (tēs hupomonēs tēs elpidos). The Greek word for steadfastness (or “patience” as the KJV has it) is hupomonē and it is derived from two Greek words, one meaning “to remain or to stay put” (menō) and the other meaning “under” (hupo). It is that quality which enables someone to “hang in there” however tough the going might get. And that is what Paul is identifying here as the thing which authenticates hope. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews describes hope as “the anchor of the soul” – as that which, in other words, if it is real, keeps us immovable however strong the gale or fierce the waves.

But what is hope (elpis)? Someone has said that hope is “always eschatalogical” – that is to say, it always relates to the second coming of Jesus. It is the expectation, rooted in the resurrection of Jesus himself, that (as Dame Julian of Norwich put it) “all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well” when Jesus returns … that then our salvation will be complete in every respect.

So … A faith that daily spills out in good works, a love that toils to the point of weariness for others, a hope that keeps one standing firm in all circumstances. The Thessalonians possessed such virtues in abundance. Paul says so. But, dear God, do I? Do I?

O Lord, have mercy.

Back to the Father

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. Acts 1.9.

Many years ago now I was privileged to hear Ken Blue from San Diego, California, give a series of talks on the parable of the Prodigal Son at Northern Light – a Christian Summer Camp in the north of England. After the last of the sessions I was chatting to him and I rather hesitantly raised a question that had been niggling away at the back of my mind all through the week. “Ken,” I said, “one thing puzzles me. The story of the prodigal son is all about lost sons and daughters returning from the far country to the Father; but we know that, in reality, we – the lost – don’t just ‘come to our senses’ and make our own way back. We are found and taken back to the Father by Jesus. But the parable doesn’t reflect that. I mean – where is Jesus in the parable?” “Oh,” said Ken, “That’s easy. Jesus IS the prodigal son, of course.” And then he walked away … and left me to spend the rest of my life figuring out the implications of what he had just said.

My thoughts to date are these. When Jesus left heaven and became incarnate in human form in the village of Bethlehem around 2,000 years ago, he himself was entering “the far country” where all God’s lost sons and daughters had forever beeen “wasting their substance” and putting themselves “in want”. In the story, the prodigal “joined himself to a citizen of that country” but Jesus came to “join himself” to all the prodigals. He got into the pigsty with them and became one with them. He became not only the “friend of sinners” (Luke 7.34) but also became (in some mystical way) the sinners themselves – even though he himself was without sin. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5.21). All humanity had been “in Adam” but now Jesus so identified with the human race that all humanity became potentially “in Christ” (1 Corinthians 15.22). And after thirty or so years, he made the journey home to the waiting Father and became “the Way” for everyone else (John 14.6). He was the Prodigal in whom, ever afterwards, all other prodigals were, and still are, able to make the journey.

Though C S Lewis never connected Jesus with the Prodigal Son in this way, he did call Jesus “the Perfect Penitent” and his explanation of what he meant was this. Repentance is a word that simply describes “going back to the Father.” However, “going back to the Father” involves surrender, submission and a death of the self that we were/are quite incapable of achieving unless God himself helps us to do so. But how could God help us? He could help us to love by putting some of his love into us; but he could not help us repent by putting some of his repentance in us because he knew nothing about repentance – he had never had to surrender, submit, suffer and die. Until, of course, Jesus came to earth and did just that. Jesus learned repentance – walked the walk of the prodigal back to the Father – and carried repentance back into the Godhead with him so that he can now put a little bit of his repentance in you and me – enough to get us home to the Father too.

Today is Ascension Day – which is to say that today is the day we remember the home-going of Jesus: his return – as the Perfect Prodigal, the Perfect Penitent – back to the Father. He had “come from God” and now he was “returning to God” (John 13.3). He was becoming “the pioneer (trailblazer) and perfecter of faith” who “for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12.2). Why? So that all of us could “follow later” (John 13.36).

“So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him” (Luke 15.20).

If you’ve ever wondered what happened to Jesus after he was taken up and the cloud hid him from the disciples’ sight on the Mount of Olives, forty days after his resurrection, you need look no further than this verse in Luke. This was the meeting that the cloud concealed. The greatest embrace in the history of the cosmos. The kiss that has put a smile back on the face of the universe. For from that moment on the stream of prodigals going home to the Father has been unstoppable – and all of us have been welcomed, embraced, kissed, clothed in the best robe and made to sit at the Father’s right hand “in Christ”; that same Christ who, 2,000 or so years ago, made the journey before us on the first Ascension Day.

Thanks be to God!

The Welcome Judge

Let the trees of the forest sing, let them sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. 1 Chronicles 16.33

How strange that verse sounds to our twenty-first century ears. Not the concept of trees singing: I don’t have a problem with that. No, it’s the idea that God’s approaching judgment should be a matter for exuberant rejoicing. But that is certainly what it is in the mind of King David not only here in 1 Chronicles 16 but in Psalm 96.11-13 also:

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let the sea resound, and all that is in it.
Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;
let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes,
he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
and the peoples in his faithfulness.

Why would anyone be glad at the thought of God coming to judge the earth – whether in righteousness or not? Who in their right mind would relish the thought of being in the dock at what John Wesley called “The Great Assize” – that great criminal trial at the end of time? Of course, David’s adultery with Bathsheba had yet to take place, as had his arranging for her husband to be killed; but surely there were already things in David’s life that he wouldn’t want to be brought to trial over by a holy God? Why was he so keen to find himself in Heaven’s dock?

He wasn’t; and the fact is that no such scenario was ever in his mind. In these Scriptures, the setting for God’s judgment is not an “Assize” at all. There is no dock. The proceedings he evisages are not criminal but civil and David sees himself and the rest of us as plaintiffs not prisoners – as becomes abundantly clear when we read Psalm 35.23-24:

Awake, and rise to my defence!
Contend for me, my God and Lord.
Vindicate me in your righteousness, Lord my God;
do not let them gloat over me.

The court that David has in mind is a court of social justice where, for instance, the cries of people working as little more than slaves in the sweat shops of Bangladesh to provide cheap clothing for wealthy Westerners will at last be heard. Where the terrified tears of asylum seekers bundled back on planes to face rape, torture and death will be wiped away as those who shed them are given safety and refuge. We need go no further than the parable of the unjust judge that Jesus told to see this sort of judgment at work:

He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’” (Luke 18.2-5).

What was the widow’s complaint? We don’t know. Maybe her husband had bequeathed to her an olive tree on a scrap of land, but maybe her next-door neighbour, a rich and powerful Sadducee, had re-drawn his boundaries so take in her meagre inheritance and leave her with nothing. “Not interested. Clear off!” might have been his response when she had fallen at his feet and wept and pleaded with him. “You’re nothing. You’re dirt. Nobody’s going to listen to the likes of you.” But the judge did – eventually; and the widow had her scrap of land restored to her. That‘s the kind of judgment that David awaits and that he knows will have the trees singing for joy in the day that it arrives.

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Mr Beaver tries to explain to the children (newly arrived in Narnia) who Aslan (the great Christ-figure of C S Lewis’s Narnia books) actually is. “It’s all in the old rhyme,” he says:

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrow will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight.” That is the judgment David had in mind.

Magic Handkerchiefs?

God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them. Acts 19.11-12.

Back in the Sixties I was privileged to meet Godfrey and Elizabeth Dawkins, missionaries in Kenya, when they were on leave here in the UK. They came to visit our church in Bradford which was, at that time, enjoying a time of wonderful charismatic renewal. Godfrey was a man “full of the Holy Spirit” and had a powerful healing ministry. I have long lost touch with the Dawkins but Godfrey’s testimony concerning his own healing has stayed with me down through the years. He had been born with what are known as claw feet – a condition where the toes are curled under the foot – and he still had this deformity when, as a small boy, he was dispatched to boarding school in England from (I think) South Africa. But then, one day, he received a small parcel from his parents. In it was a piece of cloth that had been blessed for his healing by David du Plessis, the renowned South African Pentecostal leader. In the covering letter, Godfrey’s parents explained to him where the cloth had come from and why they had sent it to him; and they told him to go somewhere private, place it on his feet and look to God to heal him. Godfrey did as he had been instructed and as he placed the cloth on his feet, his toes slowly unfurled and became perfectly normal.

That story came back to mind most vividly as I read those verses in Acts 19 a few days ago; and I have been turning the verses and the story over in my mind ever since. What exactly was going on at Ephesus when people took to the sick the sweat rags that Paul used to mop the perspiration from his brow and the cloths he would wrap around his waist to keep his cloak clean as he carried out his trade of tent-making? More particularly, what was going on when those rags and bits of cloth were laid on crippled legs, blind eyes and so on and legs became straight and vision was restored? And likewise, what was going on when Godfrey laid the cloth on his toes and they became straight and normal?

As someone raised in the Protestant tradition, I acquired early in my life a very “low” view of all things sacramental. The bread and the wine at Holy Communion were, to me, no more than memory aids (“Do this in remembrance of me”) and the water of Baptism was, well, just water – a symbol and nothing more. But now I am asking: Have I (and many of my protestant brothers and sisters) been missing something important here? Might it not be that God – who is, after all, the creator of matter – has, from the start, chosen to use material objects – bread, wine, oil, handkerchiefs, aprons, robes and all manner of things – as actual vehicles of (i.e., means of transmitting) his life and power? Article 25 of the Church of England’s Articles of Religion calls the sacraments of Holy Communion and Baptism “effectual signs of grace” but are they and other lesser sacraments more than mere “signs”?

I must say that the more I look at this question, the more I am drawn to the Eastern Orthodox answer to that question, which (so far as I understand it) is that God touches mankind through whatever material means he knows will be significant to those who seek his touch – water, wine, bread, oil, incense, candles, stones, altars, icons, etc – but that how God does this is a mystery to be accepted rather than solved. Indeed, in the Eastern Orthodox church, the term “sacrament” is rarely used and even the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper are “sacred mysteries”.

OK, but does it matter? Why am I bothering my head about it?

Well the more I think about it, the more I think it matters a great deal. It matters because, in our Protestant zeal to eliminate vain superstition, we are perhaps denying to ourselves and others a great many means of grace that God would gladly use to carry healing and wholeness to his people. It worries me that we may be trying to be more “spiritual” than God. I know that in my own life my faith has been at its greatest and most effective when it has been given a material focus – Mahash Chavda raising his hand and commanding my addiction to be broken in the name of Jesus (see here), for instance – but we try to tell people they should need no such material or physical focus. “Just look to Jesus,” we say. It seems clear, however, that Jesus himself had no such scruples. Not only did he use saliva (Mark 8.23) and mud (John 9.6) – you can’t get much more physical than that! – to give sight to blind eyes when just a word or a touch would have sufficed; he was perfectly happy with cloak-touching too:

“When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret. And when the men of that place recognised Jesus, they sent word to all the surrounding country. People brought all their sick to him and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed” (Matthew 14.34-36).

Ah yes, we might say, but they knew that they were really touching him through the cloak. They knew that there was no power in the cloak itself. Really? What about the woman with a persistent bleeding problem in Matthew 9? “She said to herself, ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.’ Jesus turned and saw her. ‘Take heart, daughter,’ he said, ‘your faith has healed you.’ And the woman was healed at that moment” (vv 21-22).

It seems clear to me that the woman did believe that the cloak itself possessed some inherent healing power because of its contact wth Jesus, but that didn’t prevent the healing taking place. She touched the cloak believing it would heal her but in reality and unwittingly she touched Jesus and he healed her. “’Who touched me?’ Jesus asked. When they all denied it, Peter said, ‘Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.’ But Jesus said, ‘Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me’” (Luke 8.45-46). The fact was that Jesus was in the cloak; and it is the belief of vast numbers of our non-Protestant brothers and sisters that Jesus is likewise “in” the bread and the wine and the water and the oil and the handkerchiefs and whatever else it might be that, with the eyes of faith, they recognise as a vehicle of God’s power and grace.

Let’s not forget that, in Scripture,God even touched people through Peter’s shadow – just because they believed that he would: “People brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by” (Acts 5.15).

A shadow does, of course, have no substance at all – it is merely an image cast on the ground or some other surface by a body that is intercepting the light – but even that could briefly be charged with supernatural healing power for those who used it as a focus for their faith.

What am I saying in this post? First, that many (if not all) of us need faith-objects from time to time – something that will gather all the faith we have and concentrate it at one point present to our senses in time and space: a point at which we can determine to make contact with the power of God. As we see from Scripture, almost anything can become such a faith-object. “When his shadow reaches me …” “When I put that sweat-rag on my leg …” “When he puts the mud on my eyes …” “When I touch the tassle on his robe …”

And secondly I am suggesting that we ought not only to make use of such objects with those who come to us for healing prayer but that we should not be afraid to identify them as such. “When I anoint your forehead with this oil …” “When you light this candle …” “When you take the bread …” “When I lay my hands on you …” By doing so, we might, I believe, be greatly widening the healing ministry of God by enabling his people to focus their faith in ways that they find impossible without an object of some kind that would help them to do so.

What do you think?

Known Only To Him

My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors! Make your face shine on your servant; save me in your steadfast love! Psalm 31.15-16.

An old story tells how, one day, a merchant in Baghdad sent his servant to the marketplace for provisions. The servant came home white and trembling and told his master that in the marketplace he had been jostled by a woman whom he had recognised  as Death and who had made a threatening gesture towards him. “Lend me a horse,” he begged the merchant, “so that I can flee from her.” So the merchant lent his servant a horse and the servant immediately leaped upon it and rode as hard and fast as he could towards Samarra which lay about 75 miles away. After the servant had departed, the merchant himself went down to the marketplace and sought out Death. “Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant?” he asked, when he had found her. “That was no threatening gesture,” Death replied. “It was a start of surprise. I was astonished to see your servant here in Baghdad, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

The story came to mind as I read again this morning those familiar words from Psalm 31 – “My times are in your hand.” The Hebrew word is ‘et and, used like this in the plural, it refers to the whole of one’s life and its content – all the events, situations and encounters that make it what it is. And David is declaring here, as an article of his faith, that his present situation – living rough in the Judean wilderness as Saul is hunting him to the kill – is one such “time” but that it, like all others, is in God’s hands. Yahweh is in control – however much it might seem otherwise; and he is permitting David to be hounded through the desert like some wild animal. He can save him if he wants to; and he prays that he will – “Rescue me,” he cries. But he recognises that that may not be part of the plan. Maybe the pursuit will end in death. Maybe this time Saul will finally catch up with him. But only God knows. He is in charge.

Death is, of course, the last event in anyone’s life on this earth, and I take both comfort and courage this morning in reminding myself afresh that the moment of my own death is in God’s hands. It may be today or it may not be for many years; I simply don’t know. But what I do know is that the date and the time of it is already in God’s diary. Job 14.5 tells me that my days are literally “numbered”; and once that number is reached, riding to Samarra will not help me.

Why would I want it to? If, as I truly believe, I will at the moment of my departure be caught up in the glad embrace of Love himself and will experience such joy that all earthly joys will suddenly be seen to have been only the merest of hints at what was to come, why would I not welcome death’s arrival? Well, for the obvious reason that entering into all the wonders that are there necessarily involves leaving, however temporarily, all that continues to delight me right here. And there is so much. My beloved wife, Yvonne, from whom I never want to be apart, my dear friends, my home, my garden, birds on the feeders, candlelit dinners at the Yorke Arms, the splendour of the Yorkshire Dales, the wild flowers of Crete, sunsets viewed from the front window … the blessings just go on and on.

But they will end eventually and when they do this verse in Psalm 31 assures me that it will be “time”. It will not happen a moment before or a moment after the moment my Father in heaven has ordained that it shall be ; and he will intervene in my life to whatever extent is necessary for that to be so. Of course, I understand that he has “factored in” those interventions themselves, just as he has factored in all the efforts I make to prolong my life and to keep myself safe and healthy. (In other words, he knows whether or not I will ride to Samarra!) But intervene he does – and perhaps far more than I am ever aware. That phone call, for instance, that delayed me just as I was about to leave the house the other day. I didn’t give it a second thought, but what if …? What might have happened on the road if I had left the house two minutes earlier?

There are interventions I am aware of. The fact that, in 1993, I suffered my first heart attack in my home close to the hospital and not a few hours earlier as I was rushing to catch a plane in Naples Airport carrying two heavy suitcases as well as hand luggage. The fact that, in 1995, just because of a casual remark by a friend I hadn’t seen for years, I ended up at a conference with John Wimber and Mahash Chavda and was instantly delivered from a 60-a-day cigarette addiction that was undoubtedly killing me. The fact that, in 2000, after a second heart attack, a conversation with a heart surgeon took an unexpected turn and resulted in a colleague of his performing some ground-breaking surgery on me that has carried me through to today. I could go on, but those interventions alone assure me that “my times are in his hands”.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way. There are no better hands; not my own, that’s for sure. And I’m content for them to hold all that lies ahead. As the old hymn has it …

Known only to Him
Are the great hidden secrets:
I’ll fear not the darkness when my flame shall dim.
I know not what the future holds,
But I know who holds the future:
It’s a secret known only to Him.

And here is Elvis singing it …