Opposite my old office window on the corner was a beautiful old brick building, sadly torn down now. It was impressive to see the giant machine crushing the bricks and concrete, rendering it all back to dust and hard-core – then the space was cleared. It was a bit disturbing; I thought that building would always be there to guide me around that corner. I thought of how it affected me seeing the change, even though the land was the same piece of land; I missed the familiarity of the building.
What might once have felt a solid belief, harboured in unquestionable and well-placed argument, can be rendered to dust and rubble in the face of a new and present reality. Don’t misread my thoughts here. A world without some certainties is hard to settle on, Jesus said don’t build your house on sandy land.
Yet as experience and time creep up on us we might find all the jigsaw pieces don’t quite fit, landmarks not as they once were. Is it possible that some reconsidering, some change of view can be healthy? At times in the Christian walk our complex systems of belief don’t always neatly add up. How many of us today would describe our understanding of the way God administers His grace in the same way as a year 10 years or thirty years ago? We experience a major trauma and our view of the world changes.
Directing people to where I worked used to included, ‘can you see that interesting brick house with the fancy roof’? Now it’s a plain, flat barren strip of land and the description of how to locate the office changes. I had a friend who would not for any reason row back on his position on what in the end were transient thoughts- yet at the time felt foundational, sacred, essential to his understanding of God. I doubt God ever saw it that way. At times we need to accept, as I did, that my office did not move but the landmark I used to lead folk to it did.
Many years ago an elderly gentleman gave me a copy of the Amplified Bible – He smiled and said in a broad Yorkshire accent ‘God needs tu shout occasionally at us’. How we should listen to those who have done the journey and retained a sense of humour. Of Hebrews 11:1 in this translation I gained additional understanding. I discovered a certainty that has never been reduced to rubble for me. ‘Now faith is the title deed or confirmation of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen the conviction of their reality—faith comprehends as fact what cannot be experienced by the physical senses.’
Many translations of Hebrews 11:1 say ‘faith is the assurance…’. In truth we have no promise that those incredible occasional sightings or feelings of God’s wonderful grace will remain. He blesses us with health one year, the next we contract illness. We see His majesty in a bright sunset and wake to a horrendous storm. We look out the window on a solid landmark then it is removed. As one friend puts it – ‘it’s so simple yet beyond our intellect’. Certainty is found in this: ‘comprehending as fact what cannot be experienced by the physical senses’.
There is one and perhaps only certainty – ‘I the LORD do not change…’. Malachi 3:6. Is it wrong of me to suggest that we consider the possibility that if the Lord does not change then it is we who are transformed? The modern hymn writer Graham Kendrick expressed it this way ‘In Christ alone my hope is found’. How often we find ourselves leaning on our senses, the landmarks which may be transient – less certain resting places! Is it possible that the one certainty is, as Jesus put it, ‘I and the Father are one’. We are so often taken up with the sign posts we lose sight of the destination.
Rob Wykes 