Stay small. Stay connected. Save Lives.

A Pilgrim Song

131 God, I’m not trying to rule the roost,
    I don’t want to be king of the mountain.
I haven’t meddled where I have no business
    or fantasized grandiose plans.

2 I’ve kept my feet on the ground,
    I’ve cultivated a quiet heart.
Like a baby content in its mother’s arms,
    my soul is a baby content.

3 Wait, Israel, for God. Wait with hope.
    Hope now; hope always!

What a song to sing while on your pilgrimage to the temple.  What a confession to make while you're ascending up to the temple.  I hope by the end of this blog you'll see why it's been so important to me.

We all know too well how events can take over our lives.  Nothing prepares you for 1 in 100 year pandemic bringing months of isolation, financial uncertainty and a very real threat of catching a highly dangerous virus.   Add to this the events that everyday life can serve, death, relationship break down or job losses.

Looming on the horizon for me is an anniversary that I wish I didn't have to face of an event that I still believe I haven't fully overcome...the death of my older brother, Martin.  If I allow it, the pain I feel over his loss still surges over my defences and leaves me like it did on the morning of his death, collapsed in a heap of tears!

However, over the last 7 years this psalm and the counsel I draw from it has again and again guided me to that place where I can quieten my heart and find comfort and contentment.  And boy have I need it.  Within six months my father had died, 8 months after that I stepped down from being a church leader as I faced up to the death of my marriage.

But there's a story to tell, a pilgrimage to reflect on and a song to sing that can bring hope even in every event that threatens to take over our lives.  For this psalm gives us a pathway to a quieted heart in the middle of the fiercest storms.

I hate planes, they're so uncomfortable especially for people like me that have legs up to their armpits.  Add to that a screaming child and my tolerance and patience dissolves almost immediately.  Coming home from Martin's funeral I watched as the mum battled with the baby and a toddler that had been up since 4am, tired and miserable.  The mum looked exhausted.  The crying lasted from Kenya, Somalia and into Egypt before mum gathered both baby toddler under each arm and cuddled both of them to sleep.

Is this what the psalmist had discovered?  The mother-like nurturing tendencies of God? I watched and heard my own mum aged 81, seven years ago, stand at the Kenyan graveside of her firstborn son and gather my brother's boys (her grandchildren) in her arms and speak such words of comfort, hope, courage and strength into hearts that were utterly broken.  I watched and saw the 6ft boys hearts quieten in her diminutive nurturing embrace.  I was and still am so proud of her, especially when her heart was utterly devastated too.

I have reflected on that moment so many times and before she died I spoke to her about it.  She too had been a pilgrim like us all and she had discovered the song of assent out of chaos and devastation to that place of quietness and hope.

So what is that pathway that the ancients sung about in psalm 131?

Stay small and stay connected (big) love.

The Kingdom seems to constantly focus our attention on the small.  Zechariah 4:10 says, 'Do not despise the day of small things'.  Jesus talked about the widows mite, mustard seeds and little children: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. (Mark 13:14)

"Don't try and rule the roost or think you're king of the mountain but stay small, approach every situation as though you're a child and you'll learn to receive the big love...mother-like comforting love of God.

Church approaches people from place of function and titles, pastor, teacher, prophet, apostle, evangelist, elder, deacon, youth worker.   Yet from the beginning the only thing our Abba father has ever wanted was a family.  

Our discipleship flows out of our status as son and daughter and not the other way round.  Ive been part of that cycle of anxious and exhausted christian trying to overcome brokenness in order to prove to God that I'm worthy to be called a son.   Church can get caught up in strategies and grandiose plans and pastors can get obsessed with how big their steeples are and yet fail to recognise that world isn't longing for that.  It's not interested in or looking for: the slick; the perfect; the face-booking-self-promoting air-brushed version of perfect christians.

Paul summed it up beautifully, "For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed." Romans 4:19

It's looking for people who stay small, why?  Let me answer that with another question.  Who reveals what a father is like better than a son or daughter?

The world needs and longs for sons and daughters because they can direct people to Abba father who cares, caresses, comforts and counsels through any sudden event that threatens to overwhelm them.  This is the mother-like nurturing love of our Abba,our daddy.

The Psalmist ends at a place of hope because staying small and connected to a BIG DADDY is an incredibly hope-filled place to be.  He weaves redemption into the chaotic, dramatic and traumatic moments because thats what fathers do for their children.

St Columba's affirmation

Alone with none but you, my Father,

I journey on my way;

What need I fear, when you are near,

O King of night and day?

More safe I am within your hand,

than if a host did round me stand.

In honour of my mum. A daughter of abba who showed many how to stay small.