faithactionreconciliation

"You've been leading me beside strange waters, streams of beautiful lights in the night. But where is my pastureland in these dark valleys? If I loose my grip, will I take flight?" Bruce Cockburn from the song "Strange Waters"

So as staff we're trying to add more consistent blog messages and this is my attempt to write something of wisdom here.

Recently I was asked to speak at my church on the equally tricky and encouraging passage from Romans 8:26-30. The first verse of which says the following "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans."

Now I don't know about you but that verse is one of the many in the Bible that I would have a fairly compulsive need to immediately overlook out of a complete lack of any sense of what its getting at...the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with 'wordless groans'!!!

Every human being has to confront the reality of hard times, suffering, bereavement etc - there has been this crazy theory that somehow if we call ourselves Christians we get some kind of divine 'get out of jail' or 'get out of suffering' card. The reality of course for anyone who has lived on this earth for a few years is different - loss and hard times are part of life- at worst our prayer to God can be something like what Bono wrote "You gave me nothing, now it's all I got...". Of course most of us try and move on from that feeling of utter nothingness and desolation...but that process of moving from personal desolation to thankfulness, faith and hope can be a difficult one. Because it is so difficult I think many people chose the road of denial or of believing that somehow God planned our misfortune for some reason that will make perfect sense sometime in the future, and may even result in much personal wealth here on earth!!.

For myself, 2004 was a hard year. On Father's Day in June, my Dad passed away at the age of 71, a good age but still really premature for such a wonderful man who typified grace, thoughtfulness and gentleness. This event came a few years after I had sojourned through a period in my life that I can only describe as a type of 'dark night'. Both in my 'dark night' period and in the wake of Dad's death I was confronted by the harsh reality that life is not always fair, not always simple, and not always predictable. How does this get us to understanding a Holy Spirit that intercedes for us with 'wordless groans'...

Well I guess in preparing for this sermon I had to preach, I did a bit of research and reflection on the 'wordless groaner'...the conclusion I came to was that when we are having a hard time there are two ways of understanding the Holy Spirit's work as described in Romans 8, either -

1. The Holy Spirit is suspended somewhere in time and space between us and God, groaning away in a manner that somehow makes sense to God and is comforting to us (this is a weird picture to me), OR

2. Somehow in the hardest times in our life the times when we truely have no words to say, or no prayers to pray, and all we can do is gasp, sigh, or 'groan' - these groans of pain, of questioning, of "Why?!" become prayers to God that are somehow mystically infused with the Holy Spirit. In fact we could say that Paul is encouraging us that these groans are every bit as much spirit filled prayers as those we sing or pray at the most joy-filled and faith-filled moments in life.

I don't know about you but I find this outlook deeply encouraging. Richard Foster once said that faith is not the opposite of doubt, but on the contrary faith is the opposite of certainty. For faith to be faith there has to be an element of the unsure about it. The reality for all of us is that life is about journeying ahead with a deep faith, knowing that we have a Holy Spirit that is infusing our 'wordless groans' with his life and encouragement. Sometimes there seems to be darkness, but God is hearing our groans as 'Spirit-filled' prayers.

The wonderful Bruce Cockburn penned the song 'Strange Waters' and it is a typical Cockburn-take on Psalm 23. In it he sings these words - "Lord, you've been leading me beside strange waters, streams of beautiful lights in the night. But where is my pastureland in these dark valleys? If I loose my grip, will I take flight?" For me these words capture the beautiful journey of following Jesus, the journey that is sometimes marked by confusion, hurt, mis-understanding, and loss. Yet it is also a journey we take with an 'encourager', a 'counsellor', one who intercedes for us with 'wordless groans'. Peace, Jonny

P.S. This is a photo of my Dad and Mum - John and Val Clark, pioneers of YWAM Northern Ireland from 1984-1994. One day I'll see my wonderful Father again.


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Jonny Clark
YWAM Belfast
www.belfast.ywamni.com