I can’t place the day, but I remember the experience very clearly.
It was just a few weeks after I arrived at Belhelvie and I’d gone down to the beach for a run on a glorious May morning.
I had the place to myself; the sky was blue, the wind was fresh, the sun was warm, the waves were crashing in. It seemed like there was no better place in the world to be, in that moment. And just for a second I allowed myself to act like an American and went galloping along the sand punching the air and shouting ‘wahoo’ like an idiot. Like I said - there was no-one else around to see!
I couldn’t quite believe that I was here. After the all the soul-searching and discussion, all the interviews and assessments, all the busyness of moving and settling down, we were finally here in the place we’d been called to. And it felt good.
Especially given what had gone before.
18 months prior to that run on the beach, I remember sitting at our kitchen table in Glasgow with a few trusted friends, feeling about as low as I’ve ever felt in my 40-odd years.
It was a winter’s evening – dark outside; but dark inside too; in my soul. I’d just about come to the end of myself.
Describing it all would take too long and I’ll spare you the detail, but to cut a long story short I was within a whisker of having to be signed off my work with stress.
I was in a pioneering kind of job within the church, working in a deprived part of the inner-city. There was no script to follow because I was working outwith the normal structures of the church and immersing myself in the community in different ways. And there was lots of that work that was going well.
But two things were gradually wearing me down. The politicking around the three churches I was working with, and finding myself stretched more and more thinly across too many things. I did a little time and motion study over a few months and discovered that 60-70 hour weeks had been the norm; and of course there’s no overtime in ministry.
Four years into the post, and all of the life had sapped out of me. I had nothing left to give to anyone.
We’d gathered those friends together that evening to help me think through some strategies to make things better, and to pray.
And no miracles happened that night; but their good sense and understanding were the beginnings of a recovery.
And in God’s timing, and God’s grace, that recovery led me here.
And I’m wise enough now, five years in, to know that Belhelvie Church is no Utopia. But there’s no doubt that I’m in a better place than I was.
It’s a before-and-after story, I guess.
And so is today’s Psalm.
But to make sense of what he’s writing, you need a little bit of background.
What you see on the screen is the story of the people of Israel in miniature. It’s the Old Testament squeezed into one slide.
(Image of sine wave. The peaks are labelled ‘Patriarchs, Promised Land, Return and Messiah’, the troughs, ‘Slavery (Egypt), Exile (Assyria and Babylon), and Occupation (latterly, Rome)).
I then ad-libbed the story of Israel over a couple of minutes, charting these peaks and troughs with specific reference to:
Patriarchs – Adam and Eve, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – Joseph
Slavery in Egypt – Moses leads them out and into
Promised Land – Good kings (David) – Bad Kings - Kingdom divided – Israel, Judah,
Exile – Assyria and Babylon (722 and 586BC)
Return – 70 years later, King Cyrus of Persia – temple and walls rebuilt (Ezra and Nehemiah). Exiles returned Home
Occupation – by more powerful nations. Latterly Rome
Messiah.
So having had that background, we’re in a better place to understand what’s going on in this Psalm:
Psalm 126 v 1: “When the Lord brought us back to Jerusalem, it was like a dream”.
What’s he talking about there? Promised land? More likely Return after the exile. “brought us back”.
verses 1-3 are looking back on that. Past tense. But where is he now?
Further down the curve. V4 – “Lord, make us prosperous again”.
Weeping because they’re back in hard times again!
Psalmist is sitting there in a dark place, and he has a decision to make. What am I going to do here? Am I going to accept that things are the way they are and give up, or am I going to believe that they can change? Am I going to settle for this reality, or am I going to look for the reality behind the reality?
That’s the question, isn’t it?
When I sat with those friends around the kitchen table in Glasgow, that’s what they were helping me do. See the reality behind the reality.
The reality was that I was lower than a snake’s belly and feeling like packing it all in. The reality behind the reality was that God didn’t want me that way and couldn’t use me that way, I hadn’t been looking after myself properly; I’d been working far too hard, and I’d stopped making time to be with the God who’d called me into ministry in the first place.
And when I put that right, I began to understand that the skills I have were better suited to parish ministry than pioneering ministry.
Hard to accept, but liberating to discover.
The Psalmist’s reality was being back in Jerusalem after exile and realising that things weren’t going to be plain sailing. The reality behind the reality was this sine wave of history that his people had lived through, and the fact that at every stage, God had been faithful to them and brought them through their difficulties. And that gave him hope. If God could do it once, he could do it again.
Do you see where we’re going with this?
Behind all our realities, there’s another reality; a divine reality that’s real and present, but unseen until we start looking for it.
It’s a bit like an iceberg. The parts we see sticking up above the water are only a fraction of what’s really there under the surface. They’re not the whole thing, any more than our present experience and how we happen to feel about it is the whole thing.
There’s always more. A reality behind whatever reality it is we’re facing. A reality that gets God in his proper place, and helps us see things from a different perspective.
So there’s that person you can’t stand at work. Or down your street. Or in the church. That’s a reality.
But the reality behind the reality is that that person’s known and loved by God, and there are reasons that they’ve turned out the way they are. What are you going to do with that? If you call yourself a Christian you can’t just ignore that and get on with disliking them. You have to find a way to live with that – and deal with them. That’s what God wants you to do, and can help you do - if you let him,
Or there’s that knock you’ve taken. A real body-blow. You put a brave face on it, but deep down, you’re shaken to the core. And you wonder why God let it happen. That’s a reality you live with every day of life.
But the reality behind the reality is that things happen in this world which aren’t part of the divine plan. And when those things happen, it’s always better to run toward God than away from him. Whatever you’ve gone through, other men and women have gone through the same and worse and kept their faith, It can be done. The Psalms show us that. They’re full of people pouring out this stuff to God, and in the silence that follows, finding the beginnings of an answer.
I look at the church we belong to. One commentator cruelly described what’s happening in the Church of Scotland as “one ageing, dying congregation collapsing into the arms of another ageing, dying congregation”. In some places, that’s the reality. But the reality behind the reality is that we worship the God who raises the dead and delights in making all things new. Institutions may die; traditions might perish. But the Church of Jesus Christ goes on.
So, in closing, I wonder how all of that speaks to you this morning?
What’s the reality you live with just now? Are circumstances kind, or challenging? Is faith growing, or faltering?
What’s the reality behind the reality of your non-stop life, or your workaholism, or the difficulties you’re having in that relationship?
What’s the reality behind the reality of your worrying, or your stubbornness, or your doubts about yourself or God?
However you answer, the one thing I want you to take away from this morning is that our feelings and circumstances are not the last word on how things are. God is the page on which this sine wave of our lives is drawn. Whether we’re up or down, he is the reality behind our reality.
And when we wake up to that, and set ourselves to finding him in the middle of whatever’s going on in life, that’s when things begin to change, and change for the better.
That’s what I found out in that dark kitchen surrounded by those caring friends;
That’s what the Psalmist found out in Jerusalem, surrounded by those warring nations.
In every situation, there’s always more going on than we know. Just under the surface, God is at work, if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear.
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