When I was about 19 one of our farm hedgerows was cut down because it need to be rejuvenated. I walked past is recently and 40+ years later it is healthy and strong. All those years ago, a kindly man cut me a thumb stick from a fine piece of hawthorn as reminder of the old hedge; I still have that stick which is stout and comfortable to use.
I learned to use a stick, particularly when walking steeply downhill, in those youthful days of carrying first one and then the other of the children, initially in a back pack, and then on my shoulders. I worked out the hard way that one is never too young to require some support.
My mother always loved the hymn ‘Fight the good fight’, perhaps because life seemed like a fight when she was bringing up a family and struggling with mental health issues at the same time. When she died at the tender age of 54 it was mother’s expressed wish that the same hymn be sung at her funeral. We did as bidden of course.
The fourth verse is about ‘leaning’ on Christ and finding that in so doing cares are lifted and are replaced by a new sort of life and love. It takes a lot of trust to rely on a stick to prevent a calamity when descending a steep hill carrying a wriggling toddler but that’s nothing beside the trust a mountaineer places in support equipment or, literally, a life-line. Many people find it very hard indeed to call out for help and more difficult still to accept it when it is given.
Why is it so very hard to put trust in supports of all sorts, especially in God when his desire is to love us into a safe place?
A prayer
Christ my guide, my life, my love, show me how to trust you the more as my needs grow greater and not to resist the help you give me for your own dear sake. Amen.
‘Cast care aside; upon your guide
Lean, and his mercy will provide;
Lean, and the trusting soul shall prove
Christ is its life, and Christ its love.’
(John Samuel Bewley Monsell