Known, loved and called by name

About 9 years or so ago now I listened to an excellent talk in Regent chapel about the calling of Moses in Exodus 3, and in particular God’s revelation of his name to Moses. More excellent than the talk though was the bible reading before the talk. It was, I think, one of the last times that Rita Houston, the wife of Jim Houston, the founding principal of Regent, read in chapel. She was an elderly Scottish lady, with a wonderful Scots accent, and she loved to read Scripture.

What caught my attention on this occasion was the way she read God’s calling of Moses’ name: “Moses, Moses”. When she said Moses twice it felt like all her years of calling children and grandchildren by name gave a unique exposition of those words. Somehow I had the sense that it was in this way, in this tone that God called Moses all those years before – but I couldn’t put it into words – and I’ve never been able to put it into words, and even now I can’t articulate that sense fully – I know that you can’t see what I meant, because you weren’t there in chapel that day.

Then last night I read the words that explained it all. Suddenly I knew what I was trying to say, and what those words had communicated to me, all those years before. The words come from an excellent book that I’m really enjoying reading – Embracing the Body by Tara Owens (IVP USA).

It is a book that I thoroughly recommend to anyone – so often our thoughts about the body have a decidedly negative tone (at least in the relatively conservative evangelical world in the UK that I am a part of). Indeed I wonder if our neglect of thinking theologically about the body may well be at least partly behind a number of the scandals that have hit our evangelical world in recent years – perhaps there is a tendency to suppress our feelings about our bodies and physical life until they suddenly emerge in harmful or inappropriate behaviours. Whether that is so or not, Embracing the Body is definitely worth reading and the words that struck me about God’s call of Moses’ name are these:

It’s at this point that God calls Moses’ name, not once but twice. And Moses says one of the most dangerous and beautiful things in response in all of scripture … “Here I am”.

This isn’t just a statement of fact, as if God didn’t know where Moses was and might be wondering if he’d called the wrong name. There are a few things going on here (as is the case with all of Scripture).

First, Moses has heard the God of the universe call his name. If you’ve never had this experience (and most of us haven’t), imagine with me the idea of being called by name by the person who loves you most and knows you best in the world. The person who knows all of your faults and struggles, the whole of your story from beginning until this moment, who knows your joys and your dreams and the wild hopes that you only dare whisper in the dark to someone who knows you utterly. Imagine that person, who is the safest person in whose mouth your name could rest, saying your name in a way that carries with it all of the love, grace and profound acceptance you could ever hope to enjoy. Imagine them saying your name in a way that causes you to know, without doubt or confusion, that you are deeply loved for who you are right in this moment, that you couldn’t be more perfect or more cared for, that you are loved for everything that you are and everything you are not. Imagine hearing your name in that way.

Then imagine hearing it a second time, a time that builds on the first time. In that second hearing imagine the first time you heard your name being amplified. Because you have already heard, already know with every fibre of your being that you are loved beyond every measure you could come up with, that every way of gathering love into one place has been expressed in the way your name was said the first time. When you hear your name a second time, what you hear in the calling of your name is a calling forth of everything that you know that you are but want to become, a calling forth of your purpose, of what you have been uniquely crafted to be and to do, and answer to every why you’ve ever asked when it came to your purpose and presence on this planet. Imagine hearing yourself named in such a way that you resonate so deeply your soul thrums with it – a sense of a note being chimed that is the very note that your soul is meant to sound when struck with the things of this life, with your very purpose. This naming is powerful – it’s the naming of Genesis and it’s God calling Moses back to the garden.

That is just a taste of what it might be like to hear your name called by God, not once but twice. And that taste points to Moses’ response to that calling – a calling of both what is and what is to be. He was named by God (yet again) a naming that was so much more than repetition for emphasis.

Tara M Owens – Embracing the Body – p163-165

That is what I heard in the chapel that day 9 years ago as an elderly Scottish voice read God calling Moses at the bush. Reading that quote last night, in the context of having spent 3 years immersed in Exodus and the study of the words spoken between God and Moses, I saw what these words to Moses meant for Moses, and what they mean for us. This is what it means for God to name us – and have a name prepared for us (Revelation 2).

This is how God sees and us and knows us. I’m really struck by the combination of deep love and knowledge – and of complete acceptance and challenge for what is to come. I want the awareness of all of those things in my life – and for the knowledge of those things to change me.

So with Moses I want to say “Here I am”. Here I am, ready and waiting. Here I am – with all my weaknesses, all my failings, all my stumbling – yet here I am.

Unexpected Grief

Life has felt like a roller coaster these past few days. A feeling that is not unusual for this year. We’ve all had our worlds turned upside down in a myriad of ways.

Why though has this week felt different to the other times we have found ourselves on a roller coaster? Why have the tears flowed with ease? Is it just one too many roller coaster? Has there been one too many hard conversations? Has it been too long and I just want everything to be ‘normal’ again?

No, the answer came to me as I sat and held a sleeping child. I am journeying an unexpected grief. A grief I had not anticipated. A grief that in time will become an invitation to doing life differently. Right now though it is a grief that is real and unsettling, that means it feels like I am swimming in two directions. To be fully present and engage in pursuing ways forward for us to return to more face to face activities, to freely go about our days home educating without fearing we are more than 6, to get back to church gatherings of different sorts in person. The other direction, which I had not set out on, is this unexpected grief for the short time when I felt more alive than I have for a long time.

Lockdown is not what we are created for. We are made to be in relationship, to see others. The thing is that for me to do any of that means laying down being present and active at home in a full sense. Every trip out, every walk causes my blood pressure to drop to the point that it impacts everyday actions. The week before lockdown in March I had an appointment with my cardiologist who said I needed to get some tests done as soon as possible, because living like I am isn’t ideal by a long shot. He said we need a diagnosis so that we can either sort out treatment or put in place a plan of managing and controlling symptoms. Lockdown happened and those tests were stopped. Seven months on they are still not available.

Lockdown gave me an unexpected gift. The opportunity to be fully present at home; to be fully engaged with family and still have resources to bake, to garden, to create and sew, to read books. I felt so alive. There was no pressure to spend energy in ways I knew would mean that acitivites that give me life, gardening, baking, sewing would not be possible. I suddenly found myself one day thinking this must be what it feels like to feel ‘normal’. One activity did not have such a knock on effect that another one could not be done.

I want to be fully present in conversations with others, I want to see people again, I want to be out and about. I also want to have the ability to keep gardening, sewing, baking, reading. To be fully present at home if we have been out and about. It’s not that I want to stay in lockdown, but I am grieving that for me the more in person activities we do Mark and I will be having to start making constant decisions. For it is our family that take the brunt of that, Mark in particular as he keeps everything going.

So in many ways this unexpected grief reveals also the grief our family live day by day with an undiagnosed neuro/cardio condition that is for the most part invisible to the outside world. A grief which we will have to pick up once more as we return to more face to face activities. I remember at one point when they were ruling out MS someone saying that it was really good news that it wasn’t MS. I get that, but I also had the words of the neurologist in my ear saying “You have an undiagnosed condition, your group of symptoms as of yet don’t have a name. The good thing is that these types of conditions don’t tend to kill you but the frustrating thing is that we have no idea how it will develop over the years and therefore what that will mean for your life”.

It seems fitting that as we seem to be moving toward more in person activities again that this week I have harvested the last of our tomatoes and started work on tidying and sorting the garden in preparation to putting it all to bed for the winter. It was during lockdown I was able to plant a mini allotment in our garden and we have enjoyed tomatoes, blackberries, broccoli, courgette, sugar snap and the occasional carrot, along with flowers and lots of wildlife including a hedgehog. As with putting a garden to rest, there is the hop and invitation of what next spring will bring. There is a time to lay bare, to consider new paths and ponder new plants. In time this unexpected grief will become an invitation for doing life differently. And maybe in time those tests will also happen.