prayer

Tempered Temper in the Temple

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The account of Jesus turning the merchants and money-lenders out of the temple is a famous one, well-known even to those who would claim no regular acquaintance with the Bible. I suppose it seems to be at odds with our idea of him. In popular imagination he is either the Christ-child, gentle and meek, or he is the God-man, giving himself up uncomplainingly to the horrors of death. Those are both facets of his character, certainly, but they are not the whole person. His tour de force dealing with the agents of commerce in his Father’s house reveal an aspect of Christ that helps us understand him better.

There is a small incident in John’s telling of this story that drew my attention this week. Having taken a whip and driven the livestock out, along with their retailers, he commands the sellers of pigeons to remove the birds from the temple.

Picture the scene: he has scattered the coins, overturned the tables and personally expelled the merchants with their sheep and oxen. But the pigeon-sellers must take themselves and their wares out with no help from Jesus. What prevented him from sweeping their cages to the floor, or throwing them outside? Of course I don’t know, but I am inclined to believe that it was compassion. To rough-handle these gentle creatures would have been cruel and capricious – and, whatever people who don’t know him say, that is not in his nature. This is someone, in fact, so wholly consistent, so reliably in control of his responses, that he can direct and channel his wrath where it is deserved, and turn on a sixpence to show gentle consideration in the same moment.

His anger is not an emotion in the way that mine or yours might be. Sometimes we are controlled and directed by our feelings to a degree which can be destructive. Indeed, our forefathers believed that envy, for one, could be so powerful as to cause physical harm to the object of our desire, without us even knowing what we had done. That phenomenon – usually referred to as ‘the evil eye’ – is mentioned in a lengthy list in the Bible, alongside a whole host of other evils which are not external, but which actually emanate from within ourselves.

That’s quite a bitter pill for us to swallow – that we are not always the poor dupes of Satan, but more often than not, the willing perpetrators of badness ourselves. Our anger, our mean-spiritedness, our jealousy, our greed, our lust, our self-righteousness, our unconcern for others – that’s all on us. Satan just seeks to exploit the way we’re already inclined by nature.

What I like about this aspect of Christ is its realness. It demonstrates even further how completely I can trust him with my life. I have often been unjust to others, judging them harshly, expecting more of them than I should, and then feeling angry towards them when they fall short of my unrealistic demands. But he never has ‘a bad day’. When I go to him in prayer, he never casts up at me that I forgot him the day before when everything was going fine; he never grumbles that I do nothing for him, or retreats because he wants a little ‘me time’.

He is not a two-dimensional nursery god – Christ is multi-faceted, but not mercurial; he displays feeling, but is wholly consistent.

This is why people read Scripture: it is a means of seeing a little more clearly the beauty of Jesus Christ. And it is why, in a way, I prefer John for advent reading. The baby Jesus, whose life was in danger from the moment he was conceived, and the circumstances whose birth has become so culturally iconic as to be almost Disneyfied in the eyes of the world, he is easy to love. All babies are easy to love and none more so than the manger-child who gave us Christmas.

John presents us with something more challenging, though – he brings us Christ, who doesn’t lie helpless in a manger. He walks abroad and challenges those he meets with his very presence; and when it is necessary, he shows his wrath. Wrath to the defilers of his Father’s house, and gentleness to the helpless creatures who are guiltless of any wrong. I wish I had the wisdom to know the difference, and the self-control to treat them accordingly.

But, more than anything, this Advent, I’m grateful to know him a little better than I did last year. What an unparalleled feeling it is to be assured that there will never be any unpleasant surprises with Christ – that even his displays of anger are wholly justified, and trained precisely on the target.

Keeping the Snail’s March

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For me, Kate Forbes epitomises the challenge and the triumph of what it means to be a Christian with a public profile. The church rejoiced openly as she rose through the ranks of her party, trusted with increasingly heavy responsibilities. In our more reasonable moments we remembered to give thanks for her witness.

Sadly, our reasonable moments are all too rare and the reality is that Kate is much more likely to be attacked on questions of faith by fellow Christians than she ever is by the atheist community. For the most part, unbelievers think her faith is irrelevant and would sooner take issue with her nationalism or her fiscal policy. Or the fact that she’s a Teuch. But the brethren, oh, we don’t hold back in our carping. Although the complaints against her take many forms, they can be grouped together under the broad accusation – a perennial favourite of mine – ‘no Christian should support the SNP’. 

Leaving aside the fact that no Christian should be so flipping judgemental, let’s consider what might be behind this opinion. Because the Nationalists are in power and have been for so long, their policies are subject to prolonged public and media scrutiny. So, the opposition parties lurk in the shadows and let the ruling party take all the heat. Amongst all the finger pointing, few remember that those who stayed silent are complicit in wrongdoing as much as those who designed and built it.

A person would have to be either naïve or partisan to believe that the SNP is alone in its stance on the big ‘moral issues’ (which, bizarrely, never seem to include child poverty or homelessness). Let’s be honest, all mainstream parties have a broadly similar policy on gender, on marriage, on abortion, and on euthanasia. 

Why is that, though? Simply because they are the elected representatives of an unregenerate world. They do their secular best to create an environment of justice and social equality, quite divorced from the instruction manual. A Christian like Kate Forbes is all too well aware how doomed to failure such an endeavour is. No politician can save souls, not even if they imposed Biblical law on the nation entire. Obedience to God’s law cannot be the starting point for redemption because it grows from it – it is like expecting the flower without first supplying a seed. 

Besides, party politics is a numbers game. It is all about being in the majority – that’s how you get your views heard at branch level, and nationally. That’s how your party gets elected into power. Strategy, predicated on what the people want will bring you to the place where decisions are made. Remember, though, these are unregenerate people, for the most part, voting in a well-meaning way to get a better society for themselves, their children, and maybe even for those they see as downtrodden and exploited. They do not see Jesus as the way, far less the truth and the life; he, and his irksome followers actually stand between Scotland and progress.

And we prove them wrong . . . how? By turning on our own. We tell Christians in public life that they are falling short. Instead of giving genuine thanks to God that there are a few righteous among us prepared to be bruised and bloodied in the fray, we attack them for being part of a system that actually we all helped to create from the moment we fell. Kate Forbes can’t be a real Christian because she holds membership of a party that condones things that are unbiblical. 

This is an object lesson in shortening the arm of God. It presupposes any number of things – including that a politician cannot be called in the same way that ministers of religion are – and it seems to deny the possibility that human government is not the ultimate authority. 

People who never do anything make the mistake of thinking that they will never, therefore, do anything wrong. But, belonging – as we do – to a body whose mission statement begins with the imperative, ‘go’, stasis and torpor might actually be a greater affront than the occasional misstep. 

I have often avoided asking God his will for me, entirely because I fear his answer. He has had his way of inconveniencing me in the past, and I tremble to let him have that opportunity again. However, that is probably true in the experience of every believer – which is exactly why we should be more mindful of those who have answered his call. By ‘answered’ I don’t mean those who assume the mere appearance of vocation, but people who get their nose bloodied and their knees worn in the journey of obedience.

You pray for your minister and elders, I am sure. Such people report feeling a heightened awareness of God’s protection because of the prayer that surrounds them.

But there are other Christians who have been called and, because they don’t serve the institution we like to think of as ‘The Church’, we not only neglect to pray for them, but actually turn on them when – in our flawed opinion – they ‘fall short’. Spurgeon was well aware that some Christians were jealous of those who appeared to have done more for the cause than themselves; instead of redoubling their own efforts, they sought to drag the champions of faith back. Let’s not hold Kate accountable for the sinful ignorance of others, but let us uphold her in prayer for all the battles she has to fight.

Ultimately, they are our battles too.

Now Only Three

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On Sunday morning, I was driving through the neighbouring village of Gress. To my left, the carpark was already starting to fill up, and people were unloading an assortment of beach toys, dogs and children. Over to the right, the cemetery lay quietly, an eloquent reminder that even in the midst of life, we are in death. As I continued onwards, I fell to pondering what visitors make of our cemeteries, plentiful and prominent as they are.

In fact, like our primary schools and churches, the burial grounds are a testament to the way in which Lewis was grown. Each village was a world entire for the people who belonged to it. And note my use of language- it’s something those from outside of the islands would do well to take on board: we make no claim of ownership on these communities, but they have a claim on us. That’s why, to a degree, the concept of community ownership in the literal sense is a bit alien. Traditionally, our relationship with land has not been proprietorial.

Indeed, our relationships were always described in terms of claims on, and not by, us. Where do you belong to? Who do you belong to? 

Thus, the villages had their churches to nurture the spiritual lives of the people, and schools to educate. Land was tenanted, not possessed, and the whole patchwork stitched together by fellow feeling, common experience and mutual understanding. 

The cemeteries are a part of it. One of the first things I did as a grown-up, married woman was to pay the lair fees for myself, my husband and my mother in-law. I began life in Tolsta paying nine pounds, then six . . . and now only three. It is an annual memento mori, a gentle pecuniary reminder nach e seo baile a mhaireas. Unlike many other townships, Tolsta’s cemetery is less prominent and so far removed from the village that you could go your whole life without glimpsing it. That’s a shame, I think, because when burial grounds are at the centre of a village, they do serve as a normaliser of death as something natural. For most villages, too, until very recently, burial itself occupied a central role in community life: everyone turned out to local funerals. 

Lewis funerals were the ultimate act of community – a public solidarity with the grieving family, and a respectful acknowledgement of the deceased person’s place in the tapestry of their lives. We understand better than most how someone you barely knew, or knew only by sight or who was just a name to you, still touched your life in some way, however small. They existed, they shared your heritage, they were a part of the same things you are. And thanks to our very civilised and healthy relationship with death, we are able to give them that dignified place at the end of life. The patronymic system ensures that their memory lives on, a chain linking those of us still in life to the relations and neighbours gone ahead into eternity.  It connects us, across the continents and oceans also, to the emigrated loved ones, keeping them a part of our community in life and in death, just the same.

We are losing our hold on what has kept these communities through the centuries. The church building may be where it was placed, at the centre of our villages, but the actual church is rarely at the heart of community life. And because of this, our relationship with death is also changing, turning into something sour and unhealthy.

It is darkly ironic that the unbelievers who call Christianity ‘a death cult’ are so prepared to argue against the sanctity of life themselves. If an unborn life is inconvenient, terminate it in the bud; if a person’s health is deteriorating or their quality of life poor, remove the burden now. Don’t wait on God’s providence, don’t trust him: push his hand away and do it for yourself. Somehow, we think that a life untrammelled by difficulty or pain is our birthright, and if it isn’t provided for us we must take it for ourselves. That justifies breaking the commandment to protect life. What does God know of our suffering?

The people who placed their churches and their cemeteries at the heart of community life knew better than to turn their faces from him. In accepting his seasons of providence, they showed great wisdom. ‘Fatalistic’, some have called it, but I don’t see it that way. They trusted him with all the moments of their lives. We are linked to them, through that patronymic chain, through all the words of prayer uttered by parents for children, by sisters for their brothers and vice-versa, and by pastors for their flocks.

Let us find our way back to a place where God is permitted to be God, and we accept that it is both in and to him we belong.

Are you ready, boots?

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Everybody has their ‘thing’ and for me it’s shoes. I love them in their infinite variety and yes, that includes boring shoes as well as more    unusual styles. There are glittery unicorn flats and lightning bolt-heeled boots, but on the very next shelf is a pair of brown brogues (and blue ones and red ones and silver . . .). Even my wellies are yellow and covered with bees. Aye, okay, the boring, functional shoes are very much in the minority.

Really, however, I could manage with fewer pairs. In fact, being strictly accurate, I could get by with one. This is especially true at the moment when slippers are what I mostly reach for.

The Bible talks about shoes too. Yes, it repeatedly mentions sandals but I’ve never really got on with them (and I’m sure they’d say the same about me). What I’m referring to is the verse in Ephesians, in the ‘whole armour of God’ passage: ‘as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. 

Go looking for commentaries or sermons on this and they will undoubtedly talk about the soldiers, who needed footwear that enabled them to go into battle, secure in the knowledge that it would also permit them to stand their ground when that was necessary. It’s a good analogy for the Christian life, which seems to involve a perplexing mixture of being sent, and of remaining still. I have a whole wardrobe – okay, who am I kidding, room – full of shoes for every different occasion. There are walking boots, wellies and trainers for those times when I have to haul the dog over some bumpy Lewissian terrain; I have any amount of what you might term ‘smart’ (also ‘wacky’ if you’re rude and lacking in taste) shoes for work or socialising; and I have slippers (multiple pairs) for staying still.

But spiritually speaking, there is only one thing your feet need – the one-size fits all, suited to any occasion word of God.

Since curtailment of my outgoing ways became a necessity, I find myself speaking to God more frequently. Indeed, I read his word more assiduously. 

‘Weird’, you might think. After all, I’m not going anywhere; I’m not going out and meeting people much (or at all, officer). Apart from councillors appearing at my window with drams from time to time, and the odd plumber or electrician, no one comes to my home. So, why the increased contact with God?

‘Ah’, the sceptics will say, ‘it’s to assuage the loneliness. Faith is a crutch, a comfort blanket – she just can’t face the fact that she is completely on her own’.

No, that isn’t it. I am putting on the readiness, (as opposed to the agony or the style). You see, living our lives differently isn’t an absence of anything. This is God’s will for me now. For the moment, I don’t have to rush between work and church and meetings and home, with no white space at all in the diary, but plenty white noise.

That was the crutch, that was the comfort blanket. Rush, rush, rush. Barely coming to rest in one place before flying off to another. Always in fabulous shoes, of course.

Now I have time. I am not fitting God in around other commitments. Instead of exhaustedly going through the motions, showing up at church and Sunday School with black circles under my eyes and a short fuse under the bonnet (it’s a car metaphor; I have long since eschewed hats), I am spending quality hours in worship. 

Circumstances will change eventually, of course but that is the wonder of God’s word: the same gospel that is today like slippers for my feet can become boots in which to march, to climb or to fight. The readiness is not in me, but in him.

I can rest on that, knowing his word prepares me for all that he has planned.

Remember how he told you?

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I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m a slow learner when it comes to trusting my well-being to Jesus. Consistently faithful, wise, good and loving though he is, I can’t help trying to wrest control back for myself. 

Though I would never say that I doubt, my very actions suggest otherwise.

See, we all have pretty fixed ideas of how things ‘should’ turn out. We even do it in our prayers, telling God what’s wrong and suggesting our preferred solutions. When his answer is ‘no’, ‘not now’ or ‘not that way’ we sometimes fail to recognise it as an answer at all.

The disciples had their own preconceived ideas of how the redemptive plan should unfold. Nowhere in their thinking did a dead Saviour feature. That one event which dashed all their hopes in Jesus was actually the defining work of the Messiah – and yet, it momentarily killed the dream.

The angels guarding the empty tomb put things straight with these simple words:

‘Remember how he told you.’

We have, in all things to fall back on him; on his trustworthiness and on his wisdom. What he says, is or will be. No doubt. He has told us so, and we have only to hold fast to that.

These 24 blogs on the life of Christ began with the Angel visiting Mary, and ended at chapter 24 with the Ascension. 

Only, of course, his life did not end there. It goes on still, with him seated at the right hand of God. Trust that fact.

Trust that your life also began with him, and stretches onwards with his, through eternity. If, that is, you belong to him.

Do you? His is the only name under heaven by which we must be saved.

Remember how he told you?

Not My Will

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Forgive me expressing myself this way, but I don’t think there is a moment in all the account of his life when I admire Jesus more than at Luke 22: 42. ‘Father’, he says, ‘if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless,  not my will, but yours, be done’.

I have always loved this verse, even before I knew I belonged to him. It’s there on the dog-eared post-it note in my Key Word Study KJV. That dates back to a time in my life when I was largely carefree. Newly graduated, I had a job that I loved and was on the cusp of meeting the man who would become my husband. And in all this happy, world-is-your-oyster glow, what was God doing?

Preparing me. That’s what God was doing. 

When I leaf through that old Bible, what do I find marked? ‘My strength is made perfect in weakness’; ‘the prince of this world cometh and he hath nothing in me’ and, of course, ‘let this cup pass from me’.

Nothing in my life at that time explains the preciousness of these verses. But, just as Jesus is seen in Luke 22, readying the disciples for what lies ahead, I believe he was equipping me for a storm when everything seemed set so fair. 

There are things in this life that we would put from us if we could. If God left the choice up to people, we wouldn’t choose for ourselves the things that test and hurt us. But verse 42, aside from being the essence of everything Christ is, also shows us the way to peace. It is not mere resignation to our lot, but true acceptance of it. Jesus isn’t saying, ‘if I must, I must’: he is saying that he chooses, he prefers that the Father’s will be done. 

God has willed things for all of us that we didn’t want. But I can tell you with a sincere heart that submission brings blessing.

That, I think, is one of the greatest challenges the world is currently facing, and one where the church really must lead. A failure to accept a providence we don’t want is causing people to act in ways that are unattractive. Of course no one wants to be separated from loved ones for Christmas – but it has to be. We have become so used to imposing our own will on everything, to saying something is or isn’t so, according to our own lights, that we cannot accept a simple, ‘no’.

God is in this providence. We can kick and scream and blame our leaders all we want, but there comes a time to be silent. There comes a time to bow our heads in submission to God’s will, and to ask him:

‘Father, what would you have me do?’

Turn Again and Give Thanks

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Jesus met a lot of people on his travels. In chapter 8, we read of the woman with the issue of blood. She’s an old friend of mine, being the reason I first felt really compelled to go forward. Since then, on our journey through Luke’s gospel, we’ve come across a whole host of characters, and a variety of situations.

In chapter seventeen, though, we meet a particular group which is standing some distance from Jesus. There are ten of them, all suffering from leprosy. You might even say that they are practising social distancing. 

Contrast their physical stance, however, with what they have to say. ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us’, they call to him. Their illness causes them to remain separate from the great crowd that seems to attend Jesus wherever he goes. Yet, their eyes are on him, and their hearts reach out to him in faith.

I wonder how many people, in the midst of the current crisis, lifted up their voices to him. Did we – individually and collectively – ask him to have mercy on us, and to help?

Sadly, the fact is that we just don’t see God in the pandemic. All the talk has been of ‘getting though this together’ and of finding a vaccine. No mention of our sovereign Lord

Now that it seems the vaccine may be here, though, the mood has lifted immeasurably. There is talk of light at the end of the tunnel, of a way out and . . . where?

Back to ‘normal’.

That is the highest ambition of mankind right now. Let us conquer the virus so that we can go back to living as we please. We have that much in common with nine of the ten lepers. Although they asked Jesus for mercy, only one returned to thank him when their petition had been answered.

Our problem is that we treat blessings as though they are our due, and we treat hardships as something unnatural and wrong. The fact is, both are part of God’s providence for reasons only he knows. That includes Corona Virus and all the difficulties it continues to bring.

Instead of complaining that we want the ‘natural’ order of life restored, we would do well to be like that tenth leper, the Samaritan, who remembered Jesus – because Jesus had remembered him.

Social Divide, Eternal Divide

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It isn’t the done thing to bring up the possibility of hell, let alone the absolute certainty of it. What sort of monster would bring eternal damnation into an Advent blog anyway? Oh, typical Wee Free, dragging the mood down when all anyone wants is some lovely words about the child in the manger.

Sorry, but here it is, though, in Luke 16. Jesus talks of the rich man and Lazarus, two men whose experiences in life were quite different. While Lazarus struggled, the rich man enjoyed a life of ease and plenty. Yet, when we meet them, the situation has been reversed, and Lazarus is healed of his poverty and ill-health forever. He is safe in heaven. The other man, meanwhile, has also been relieved of his earthly trappings and has swapped health and wealth for torment and anguish.

The divide that was between them in life has widened into an eternal chasm.

Lazarus is not in heaven because of his poverty, any more than the rich man languishes in hell for his riches. Neither outcome was inevitable. The message here is not that being wealthy will send you to hell; it is that resting on the comfort that money brings can distract you from the path that leads  to heaven.

Money is not enough. We mustn’t  be lulled by so much comfort. If God has blessed us with the good things of this world, we should dedicate them to his service. Giving thanks in prayer is essential- but living out that thanks, that’s the fruit of salvation.

The rich man ignored the want that he saw on his very doorstep. He continued to enjoy his wealth as a right and not a privilege to be shared. Lazarus, meanwhile, he left to the tender mercies of the dogs – who were kinder than he in the end.

We live in a world of such divides still. I write this in the warmth and comfort of my bed, safe in a centrally-heated house. As I do so, people all over the world are in circumstances too unspeakable to contemplate. Is that ‘fair’, to use the world’s terminology? Of course not: I no more deserve my comfort than they have earned their hardship.

But both of us – I in my luxury, and the homeless beggar on the street – are offered the same opportunity for eternal riches. The important thing is for he and I to live as though this world is just temporary. 

For which of us, I wonder, is that the greater challenge?

The Nets Were Breaking

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Have you ever felt like you might be crushed under the sheer weight of the world, of your own failings and disappointments? It’s a rare person who has not. We have all been in situations where it feels as though, no matter how hard we try, no matter how justified our actions, our efforts are doomed not to bear fruit.

If we are Christians, that sense of inadequacy comes with a side-order of guilt, because we are well aware that our failing is often a result of cutting God out of the picture. And yet – if you are anything like me – in situations like that, we still persist in doing it our own way.

We know, but we somehow don’t believe, that God will do it better.

When we trust in him, though, he does amazing things. I can’t count the number of times I have put myself through agonies – what should I do, should I speak up about this, is it up to me to act, have I been wrong, is my anger justified – and why? All because I do not carry everything to God in prayer. And finally, when I am broken by my own complete inadequacy, and I go to him, arms out like a hurt child, what happens?

He astonishes me all over again.  

If only I would remember that, then, and not repeat the mistake of thinking I’m doing this alone. Luke 5 spoke to me so boldly this morning about the difference between my puny efforts, compared to those that are done in the strength and wisdom of my Saviour. 

We have to ask ourselves, when the going is tough, is the Lord withholding his blessings from us, or are we keeping ourselves aloof from him? Is our profession of faith truly bound to the way we live? Are we saying we trust in Jesus, but keeping our own hands on the steering wheel?

I know I am very guilty of this. Here, though, in Luke 5, is the reminder I need.

By myself, I am fishing with no bait; leaning on Jesus, the nets are straining to hold all that he bestows.

Hail to the chief

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Nobody likes to lose. As we watch the United States struggle to put a leader in the White House, it’s worth asking ourselves how well we handle defeat. It is felt by everyone, I think, as a wound to the soul: rejection and relegation are not what our hearts desire.

I’m certainly not good with it. You’d think all those years of campaigning for the SNP in the wilderness might have taught me something. ‘Smile’, someone would hiss as television cameras panned around the throng attending yet another predictable count. We tried our best not to sound too bitter or look too dejected. And, when fortune smiled upon us, a very long time later, the challenge, equally, was not to be too brash or ebullient in victory.

We were told in childhood that it was proper to be ‘a good loser’. I don’t suppose anyone taught  poor Dòmhnall Iain that, though. As far as he’s concerned, I’m sure, the two words don’t belong in the same sentence.

But the art of losing gracefully is also the touchstone of wisdom, I think – and that is why no one is very surprised that the 45th president of the USA seems disinclined to go out with dignity. He is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a wise man. Like all of us, he is flawed and overly directed by his ego. 

And he is a lesson, a cautionary tale, if only we – and he – would see it that way.

Four years ago, when he was first elected, a small number of our church congregation were interviewed about what we would do if he visited Stornoway. I think we were supposed to talk of Presbyterian fatwahs, of shunning, and of banishment. The footage never saw the light of day, however, because what we DID say failed to fit the popular message.

Now, at what appears to be the end of Donald J Trump’s short-lived presidency, we very much need the world to hear what we had to say then. And we very much need to mean it.

Christ is the head of the church, and his church turns away no man. It doesn’t matter at all how the world sees Donald, or how Donald sees the world – there is shelter in the Lord for everyone. That grandson of Lewis could have gone to Christ fresh from his inauguration, or he could go right now in the ashes of defeat . . . and he would be received in exactly the same manner. The angels in heaven could not rejoice more over his soul if he were saved as President of the United States than if he were a tramp whose home is on the streets.

I know what it is to have the closeness of my God in the very worst and loneliest hours of my life. Only God can see the very rawest parts of our griefs and sorrows, only God counts our tears. And when we are brought low, he raises us up – not on our own feet, but in his arms, from which height and safety we come to realise it was never our strength bearing us anyway.

With all my heart, I wish this for Donald J Trump now. Few people are so publicly broken; what a great testimony it would be to see him publicly healed. Oh, I don’t mean in that stagey, tele-evangelist way that is so offensive to anyone who has suffered or witnessed suffering. Not the ‘God wants you well’ message that is really just another way of telling us that this world is everything. I mean quietly, humbly, meeting with his Saviour, even at the well of humiliation.

Imagine then, Donald Trump rushing to tell all to the people – to address the ones who spoke against him, who campaigned for Biden – and boasting, not of himself, but of God. Think of him being astounded to hear all the things he ever did, from the lips of Christ, and not poured out in boastful pride by himself.

If you’re reading this and thinking it highly unlikely, or even impossible, that such a change could ever come to be, then you haven’t met with Christ either. 

Perhaps if we knew him better, we would not feel the need to disown our leaders with childish hashtags like ‘Not my president’. The Christian view says, ‘this is not only your President, your Prime Minister, or your First Minister , but your neighbour also’. 

It’s a challenge. Not everyone we are called on to love will be loveable. Then again, perhaps we’re not that loveable ourselves. Yet, when we were still mired in sin, Christ redeemed us.

Perhaps the miracle of power for which Donald Trump’s spiritual adviser prayed this week will come in ways that neither she, nor we, imagined. Her God does his best work with the broken and is, ultimately, the only one who can speak truth to power – for he is both, himself.