A few years ago, we were privileged to spend a few hours in a small boat in the Atlantic, off the Azores, watching whales. It was the end of the season, there was a good swell and with hindsight, we may have been insane to take the risk.
One of my memories of being an inexperienced father is the lesson that children push against rules but if there are no rules, they can get irritable, for fear of the freedom they have. The ultimate was being out in the countryside and the anxiety caused if I could not accurately pinpoint our position on a map at every moment.
In the final verse of the hymn, ‘The Love of God is broad like beach and meadow’, the writer weaves together the concepts of judgement, freedom and compassion in a way that I think I understand better from looking back on parenting than I do from theoretical and literal interpretation of words.
1.. I want to be free
2.. I want a boundary
3.. I want a way back when I am wrong
Many miles out in the Atlantic in a small boat is not the place to have a panic attack about water – fortunately that didn’t happen but I can see how easily confidence gives way to fear.
O judge us, Lord, and in your judgement free us,
and set our feet in freedom’s open space;
take us as far as your compassion wanders
among the children of the human race.
As the rules around COVID restrictions have flexed over the last year and more, fear has been a constant theme amongst so many people. In the next phase there is the fear of too much freedom to contend with. I am writing this on the auspicious Monday, 19th July but by the time you read it, anything could have happened.
Thank you to Fred Kaan for translating this helpful hymn from the Swedish.
A prayer Lord, sometimes it is so very difficult to trust. We worry when things are going wrong and we worry that they might go wrong when they are going right. Help us a free us by assuring us where the limits of your compassion lie, for Jesus’ sake, Amen.