Making Sense

Recently an unexpected event happened which has changed my life. I was made redundant. Rather my post was made redundant. After 36 years of continuous employment I was unemployed. The job I thought was for life suddenly evaporated into thin air.

Earlier in the summer I remembered an Air France plane carrying 228 people from Brazil to France suddenly vanished over the Atlantic after flying into turbulence. Sudden events happen to us in everyday life. Our days are suddenly, without warning, interrupted. Out of the blue an unexpected phone call relays sad news: suddenly you miss the promotion you were expecting, suddenly you find yourself with a medical condition that requires a radical change of lifestyle. Suddenly and unexpectedly a child is born with severe disabilities. Suddenly a bright, loving, teenager is randomly stabbed. Suddenly a gifted 40 year old finds himself slipping into a mental wilderness. Suddenly a close and loving friends dies. Life can suddenly change course for millions of people every day, and then life can seem terribly unfair, cruel, messy and decidedly unjust. That is the human condition. We live with uncertainty. Sudden events happen. What then do we do? How do we deal with these sudden unexpected life events that interrupt and change our lives?

Sudden events happened to Jesus too. Matthew records a couple of incidents that interrupted Jesus’ daily schedule - the account of the menstruating woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ cloak and the synagogue leader whose daughter had died (read Matthew 9 18-26 in the Authorised Version and the use of the word suddenly). How did Jesus deal with these two unexpected events which interrupted his daily life, how did he respond to this present emergency? The answer – with love and compassion. Jesus stepped outside the normal religious and cultural expectations and regulations of his day – he touches a dead girl and menstruating woman. He breaks with his society’s taboos of completeness and perfection (represented by the number twelve). He heals these two women by making himself ritually unclean. So when unexpected sudden events happen to us and to our friends Jesus way of dealing with such circumstances is to act with love and compassion, to embody mercy. Sudden events, good and bad, large and small will have affected most of our lives. It is often these sudden events that shape our lives for good or ill. Can you see in them, as Jesus was challenged to do, God at work bringing life and hope?

Janet Morley, writer and poet, has a challenging prayer which expresses this challenge of compassion and mercy in the sudden events that take place in our lives. It begins "O thou sudden God, generous in mercy, quickener of new life, giver of new love, irreverent, subversive " and concludes with Augustine's famous words from his Confessions, "Late have I loved thee O beauty so ancient and so new." Can we hold together in our experience the suddenness and the ancientness of God and of God's ways of mercy and compassion and be faithful to both?

O thou sudden God, generous in mercy, quickener of new life, giver of new love irreverent, subversive, deep source of yearning, startling comforter, bearer of darkness unmaker of old paths, bringer of strange joy, abundant, disturbing, healing unlooked for tender and piercing: late have I loved thee. O beauty so ancient and so new.

(c) Janet Morley, 1988


Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new! Too late have I loved Thee. And lo, Thou wert inside me and I outside, and I sought for Thee there, and in all my unsightliness I flung myself on those beautiful things which Thou hast made. Thou wert with me and I was not with Thee. Those beauties kept me away from Thee, though if they had not been in Thee, they would not have been at all. Thou didst call and cry to me and break down my deafness. Thou didst flash and shine on me and put my blindness to flight. Thou didst blow fragrance upon me and I drew breath, and now I pant after Thee. I tasted of Thee and now I hunger and thirst for Thee. Thou didst touch me and I am aflame for Thy peace...."

Augustine Confessions (Lib. 10, 26. 37-29, 40: CSEL 33, 255-256).


Ray Anglesea