I’d like to share with you something of how God has been teaching me through my personal circumstances. Your circumstances will be different, and they may include many things you would like to change, but we all have to follow Christ where we are. For me, this has meant following Christ in very different circumstances than I envisaged when I was a student over 20 years ago.
I married another London School of Theology student, and I often glance fondly at her photo as I walk past it in the faculty corridor. She was the most simply good human being I have ever met, and we could not have been more in love or happier together. We married in 1984 and, within a few months, were involved in pastoral ministry in London.
But Sue was never strong physically, and two years later we found out why. An examination by a consultant at a central London hospital led to Sue being admitted the following morning, and two days later, she underwent surgery. After several hours in the operating theatre, she was finally brought back to the ward looking more dead than alive. Ovarian cancer had been discovered, and Sue’s ovaries and womb had been removed. We had no children, but had dreamed of having a large family. All those dreams turned to ashes in one terrible moment as the consultant told us the news. Worse was to come. We were informed that the cancer had spread widely—too widely to be removed by surgery. I will never forget the sad-faced consultant saying to me, “I’d like to be able to give you some hope, but I can’t give you any hope at all”. He suggested that Sue might live another six months, or possibly another year or two at most. Sue was just 26.
A gruelling year of chemotherapy followed. I’ll spare you the gory details, but at the end of it, the cancer seemed to be in retreat. During that period of improved health, we were contacted out of the blue by social services from another part of the country. The voice on the end of the phone explained that they had heard of us through someone we had met on holiday who happened to work in that department. “We have a little girl on our books”, the social worker explained. “She has been advertised all over the country, but because of her multiple physical disabilities, we cannot find a home for her. However, we have heard of you and wondered if you might be willing to take her.”
That was how Rebecca came to live with us a few weeks later, aged 14 months. Shortly afterwards, we were allowed to adopt her. When she was born, the best medical opinion was that she might never be able even to sit up on her own, and at the time she came to us, we expected that she would probably spend her life in a wheelchair. But with lots of care from Sue (who had a nursing background) and after several operations at Great Ormond Street Hospital, Rebecca began to progress far beyond the most optimistic forecast.
Alas, it eventually became clear that Sue’s cancer was still active. For three more years Sue suffered horribly. I thank God that I was able to nurse her at home, and I shall always be grateful for the kindness of friends who helped me to care for Sue, especially during the final year of her life when she was a complete invalid. The end came in March 1996. Sue died as she had lived, full of faith and the Holy Spirit. Among the final things she said to me was, “Tell everybody that the promises of God are true, and that those who hope in him will never be disappointed”.
I now found myself a widower and a single parent with a ‘special needs’ child. I freely admit that Rebecca rescued me in my grief. I used to think God sent her because she needed us; I have now come to see that God knew that one day I would need her. It would have been terrible to have had only myself to think about at that time. Having to care for Rebecca was the best thing that could have happened to me. I owe her an unpayable debt.
Nevertheless, this was not the life I had expected. For some time, I had been learning to multi-task: caring for Sue and Rebecca, running a home and pastoring a church (I really cannot praise too highly the patience and support of Rayners Lane Baptist Church). Now I had to accept that this lifestyle was here to stay. My role as a single parent was one for which I felt exceedingly ill-equipped. We seemed to eat an awful lot of fish-fingers and chips in the early days. It was a great day when we progressed to fish-fingers, chips and beans —three things co-ordinated!
In the midst of learning new skills and adjusting to a different lifestyle, I was also having to come to terms with the loss of Sue. Nothing can really prepare you for the loss of your life-partner, and those who have not been through the experience can scarcely begin to appreciate what it is like, no matter how sympathetic their imagination. I learned that lesson the hard way. I have certainly known moments of self-pity when the sense of loss has been almost overwhelming. Ministers’ conferences are a danger-area for me—the knowledge that others are returning to wife or husband, and I am alone. How often has that left me in the depths of depression! Likewise, being with couples socially: I am grateful to be included (after all, being excluded would be far worse), but there is always that reminder of my own loss and loneliness.
I wonder if my story has any echoes in yours? Of course, the details will differ, perhaps considerably, but we all face joys and sorrows of one kind or another. There will be things in your life that are not as you would wish. Some of your difficulties may be long-term, and some, perhaps, are breaking your heart. Maybe you are single and wish you were married. Perhaps, God forbid, you are married, and you wish you were not. You may be struggling to cope with your children, your parents or your health. There may be something in your life that, for you, is an almost unbearable sorrow.
And where is God in all of this? In the midst of whatever circumstances we face, what does it mean to follow Jesus? That is the most important question. During Sue’s final illness and during the time after her death, I often felt trapped —unable to lead the life I wanted, unable to serve as a pastor in quite the way that I had hoped—hemmed in at every turn by my domestic situation. However, I came to see that, in fact, there was nothing in my circumstances preventing me from attempting to keep the two greatest commandments: to love God and to love my neighbour. The trouble was, I wanted to serve God in all sorts of ways other than the ones he had prescribed for me. I would look longingly at opportunities I was ‘missing’, and think, “Lord, if only I could do that for you”. But we love God most and serve God best by doing the thing he asks of us rather than constantly wishing we could do something else instead.
Sue knew me well enough to know that I would wrestle with this issue, and that I would soon be conscience-stricken over what I would perceive as the many gaps in my pastoral ministry caused by the necessity of caring for Rebecca. She therefore wrote about it in a book of articles that she prepared for me to read after her death. I thank God for her foresight in ensuring that she would still be able to say what I would need to hear in the coming years. Here is a little of her wise counsel:
By constantly looking at our situation and thinking that surely it would be better if we could do this, that or the other, as we used to, we exhibit a lack of trust in God. All things are being accomplished according to his purposes, and although our limitations may be personally frustrating, we have no reason at all to conclude therefore that God’s plan … is in any way frustrated. Quite the contrary. May we not believe that those limitations that we find so galling are actually being used in his purpose for the good of ourselves and those we serve? But sometimes we are so wrapped up in what we think ought to be happening that we are unable to perceive God’s grace abundantly at work in the situation.
… We take too much on ourselves if we constantly mourn the loss of ‘opportunities’. The direction of our lives is God’s responsibility—ours is to seek his strength to live and serve daily as he would have us in whatever situation we find ourselves. And if God has presented us with a situation, should we not regard that as what he wants us to do?
Well said!
When we find ourselves in circumstances we don’t like, we need to ask what God may be wanting to give us through those circumstances. Sometimes we are so busy resenting our circumstances, we are incapable of paying attention to God’s lessons through them. Yet presumably God is seeking to give himself to us all the time, and our circumstances are one of the vehicles of his self-giving. But, sinner that I am, I don’t always want to know this, or I don’t always want to receive what God is trying to give. Self-pity and sulking seem more attractive options, however destructive they prove to be in the long-term.
Sometimes we spend so long looking at the thing we can’t do, we fail to do the thing that we could—the task that lies to hand. On a shelf in my study sits a piece of calligraphy—a quotation from Helen Keller that Sue copied out for me some years ago: “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us”. Self-pity makes us blind. Many times since Sue’s death I have prayed this prayer: “Forgive me, Lord. You gave me the perfect gift of right now, and I threw it away hoping for a better gift later.”
The great lesson that I am constantly having to learn is that my circumstances, far from being the enemy of my soul, are its friend, its teacher. They set the agenda, mark out the course, underline the lessons I most need to learn, and persist in dragging me back to those lessons when I want to wander off into something more appealing but less beneficial. This is not a cruelty to me, but God’s kindness. He has eternity in mind, whereas we are so short-sighted. He knows what it takes to make each of us like Jesus—to make us rich in our character and fruitful in his service.
In January 1996, two months before Sue died, I wrote some reflections on my circumstances in a devotional journal. I noted that:
The lessons God wants me to learn include:
- That God’s agenda, not mine, is the one that matters
- That it is always possible to do the will of God
- To live contentedly, without envy or resentment
- Humility
- To serve (and live) joyfully in every situation
- Trust must replace anxiety. God knows what he is doing and will supply every need.
Looking back now, I am struck by the fact that my circumstances were the perfect setting to learn those lessons. May God forgive me for not having learned them more successfully, but it was not the circumstances that were at fault. God knows what he is doing.
And so I want to say to you that there are no perfect circumstances in which to learn to follow Christ—except those you are in today. That is why he has you there. I do not want to speak lightly of the difficulties some of you may be facing; I acknowledge that you may be living with desperately painful circumstances. Believe me, I know what tears are; I have shed buckets-full. But Jesus will meet you in your circumstances and make you the person a loving heavenly Father wants you to be—for his glory and for your good.
Circumstances change, and life has moved on in the years since Sue’s death. Of course, I still live with the loss. But Rebecca’s physical situation has continued to improve, and she manages her disabilities well enough to be fully independent. I’ve learned to cook a few more things (amazingly!), and new horizons have opened up in pastoral ministry, though I am still happily based at Rayners Lane Baptist Church. Yet my life is still under the same God, and the same calling applies: to love and serve God today, right where I am. He continues to remind me that there is (and was) nothing in my circumstances (and yours) to prevent me from following Jesus, only things that will help us, when rightly received.
I close with a line from John Greenleaf Whittier, who wrote, “The cross, if rightly borne, shall be no burden, but support to thee”.1 Whatever form the cross takes in your life, if you bear it rightly, it will turn out to be not a heavy lump of wood that crushes you, but a stick you lean on as you journey to heaven. Bear the cross with faith and humility in utter dependence on God. Far from breaking you, it will be the making of you. You will become like Jesus.
Endnote
1 John Greenleaf Whittier, ‘The Cross’, The Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Ward, Lock & Co, London, 1911, p. 340. Whittier attributes the thought to Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ.
