I first wrote this article in April, 2008.
At that time I was the Corps Officer at Exeter Temple. It was a week before Sven and I got engaged and two weeks before he had a massive stroke. As I look back on it now I feel these words still speak and having shared in fellowship, interview, conversation and prayer with some of you in recent weeks I now take it and ask God to use it to minister to you where you are now.
Many, many years ago as a first year Cadet I was sent to Scotland for Annual Appeal Collecting as part of my training. I found myself staying with two Officer families in their homes and working closely with them during that two week period. As I was about to return to the Training College one of the Officers gave me a plaque in memory of our time together. It read:
‘Learn to laugh at your mistakes,
Everyone else does.’
He went on to say that it was one of those important life lessons that he had learned and would encourage me, as a then young person to do the same.
As you can no doubt imagine, since that time there has been many an occasion when I have had to learn to laugh at my mistakes … and not all of them a lifetime ago!
One such occasion was when a number of what seemed like huge changes were happening to me. I so wanted to be the very best I could be for the next phase of my life, and so I did everything I could to try and prepare myself physically, mentally and spiritually.
For sometime now one of my favourite writers has been Eugene Peterson, writer of the Message paraphrase Bible. I love that Bible because for me it helps make Scripture more intimate, personal, relational. However, I had also come across a few books that Eugene Peterson had written and thought I could gain much insight from his life and ministry.
One book that particularly drew my attention was: ‘Working with Angels’. At that time I thought it was a wonderful, positive title that could perhaps help me to look at people in a whole new light. Maybe even more so in the way Christ would want me to look at people. And so I ordered the book and eagerly awaited its arrival.
Much to my amusement when I opened the package and saw the title, I read: ‘Working the Angles’ … it was absolutely nothing to do with angels … the very precious, beautiful people that God has given to us … in whatever shape or form He has given them to us, as I had assumed. ‘Working the Angles’ put a whole new perspective on what I was expecting and yet as I thought about it, I recognised that the reality of life and ministry, however that is worked out, is much more about ‘working the angles’ than working with angels.
Someone once said: ‘One of the kindest things God has given to us, is that of not knowing the future.’ I think I am inclined to agree. I guess most of us would never believe that we would get through what we have got through in our lives, had we known the issues we were going to have to face before we faced them. I mean some of those painful, difficult times that maybe now in hindsight we know we only got through, or are getting through because of the grace of God with us.
Some of the ‘angles’ in our lives are things that I imagine we would never have dreamed we would ever have had to face or work through. Angles, that maybe at the time have been devastating, destructive, demoralising to name but a few emotions. And yet at the very same time, angles that have helped shape and formed us into the very people we are today.
As I think of some of those ‘angles’ in my own life I am encouraged, enabled and enthused by the words of Scripture in Isaiah 43. The Message Paraphrase reads:
‘When you’re in over your head,
I’ll be there with you.
When you’re in rough waters,
you will not go down.
When you’re between a rock and a hard place,
It won’t be a dead end.’
Scripture doesn’t say to us: ‘If’ you go through hard times … ‘If’ you have to work with the angles … but it says: ‘when’ and God constantly goes on to say: ‘I will be with you’.
‘Because I am God, your personal God,
The Holy of Israel, your Saviour.
I paid a huge price for you …
That’s how much you mean to Me!
That’s how much I love you!
I’d sell off the whole world to get you back,
trade the creation just for you.
So don’t be afraid: I’m with you.’
The experience of the years has shown me … proved to me that when I have needed God most He has come … and when He hasn’t He has sent someone … maybe an ‘angel’ to help me with the ‘angles’.
... Gosh, three and a half years later I can sincerely testify to the truth of those words, that Scripture and thank God for the numerous times I was able to kneel in those early days of Sven's stroke in fear, trepidation, in prayer and this mercy seat and found Jesus waiting to meet me there to help me 'work the angles'.
Glad
Glad Ljungholm
Major
Divisional Candidates Officer
North Western Division
UKT
No comments:
Post a Comment