We live in uncertain times. People mostly have. It’s not difficult to look back on history and see events of greater turbulence than in our own time. Yet even periods of relative calm and stability can contain uncertainty: economic downturns, industrial unrest, health scares, terrorism, rumblings abroad. Someone, somewhere, is always threatening a war which may have consequences for us.
In the midst of this it is natural to feel fearful and anxious.
Whatever has been going on around me in the world, my life — like yours — has had its share of challenges: bereavements, ill-health, struggles with work or challenging relationships. The person of Jesus Christ has been a constant presence throughout my life, but never more so than in difficult times. I have found in him not only a role-model and wisdom teacher, but someone who has rescued me from living down to the worst of myself.
In the film As Good As It Gets, an unlikely romance develops between a bad-tempered and anti-social Jack Nicholson and attractive single mother, Helen Hunt. He lacks the social skills to woo her effectively, and whenever he seems to be making progress he commits a terrible faux pas, and sets back their relationship. Confused by his behaviour, Helen Hunt’s character at one point demands to know why he keeps bothering her. He replies, ‘You make me want to be a better person.’
That’s how I feel about following Jesus. He makes me want to be a better person, to dispense with the patterns of behaviour that spring out of fear and anxiety, to see myself not as the centre of the world but as part of a much bigger story which rests on God.
The beginning of that story is told in the Bible, where the people of God definitely lived in fragile and uncertain times. The 66 books of the Bible cover a period of hundreds and hundreds of years, where we see folk wrestling with the eternal human struggle of whether to live life simply to please themselves, or be shaped as a community centred on God.
When they do well at living as the people of God, they discover stability and security. When they all choose to please themselves and pull in different directions, society breaks down and they become vulnerable to invasion or defeat by the threats around them.
And then Jesus arrives on the scene, showing us that security isn’t only about our outer lives and whether we feel safe, but that in even the most difficult of times, we can feel secure in God within our inner life.
In the years since the stories of Jesus were collected and shared in the gospels, they have inspired and enabled Christians living in the darkest of times to cultivate an inner life centred on God, and find in that the most amazing source of peace and love.
As St Paul wrote, ‘Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God’ (2 Corinthians 3:4, NIV).
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