Month: March 2021

The answers came thick and fast, spiders, shadows in my bedroom, creaks at night, the toilet flush, a zombie apocalypse.  I had just asked a primary school class, ‘What really scares you?’  Of course, those fears are not rooted in a genuine threat, never the less the fear is real.  How, though as adults, do we respond to genuine threat?  I have realised that I stop breathing when suddenly threatened and have to tell myself to breath again.

I often ask asylum seekers who have experienced sustained extreme trauma if they are sleeping OK?  Everyone has said they have real difficulty sleeping.  In Psalm 3 David prays in the middle of extreme trauma.  His murderous son has just launched a military coup, turning nearly all the country against him and he is being pursued by an army of thousands.  David boldly states, ‘But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high.’^v3Can David sleep OK?  Amazingly, yes he can.  His words are, ‘I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.’^v5 I pray that whatever your ‘zombie apocalypse’ you will know the Lord as a shield around you and from that gain an inner peace.

I knocked on my son’s door and it was opened by my 4 year old grand daughter dressed on her latest fancy dress costume.  ‘Good morning Princess Cinderella,’ I said. ‘NO!!!’ she exclaimed, ‘I am Xena the Warrior Princess!’  Even at four it is kind of important to know who we are, despite gormless Grandparents.

Our sense of who and what we are can be seriously challenged when things suddenly change on us.  It can be bereavement, sickness, retirement, redundancy, an accident, war, enslavement, the birth of a child or a pandemic.  When we look in the mirror the question pops up, ‘Who or what am I now?’

In Psalm 2 David remembers God’s promise regarding his son Solomon, who is to be the next king and build the temple in Jerusalem.  ‘You are my son; today I have become your father.’^v7  This was not just a promise or prophecy for just Solomon it reached its complete fulfilment at Jesus’ baptism when God the Father repeated the words, ‘You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’  Jesus then through his death and resurrection created the way for everybody who trusts in him to be a child of God.  Paul writing to the church in Galatia said, ‘You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.’^{Galatians3:26} 

So then, whatever happens and however we feel, for those who trust in Jesus, when we look in the mirror God sees – a child of God.

Here is a youtube clip celebrating just that –