I am writing this immediately following the return to the UK of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori following their detention in Iran. Most of us will have no idea how it feels to be held without reason and without any idea when or if release will come. Similarly, ordinary people condemn such dreadful treatment of fellow human beings. There is no dignity in abuse of this nature.
Today’s hymn is Timothy Dudley-Smith’s popular, ‘Lord for the years’. It is a hymn about God’s consistent love through the ages and chapters of our story. The second line of the fourth verse caused me to stop short as I glanced through the hymn today. I felt as though I had never noticed it before, or at least, not in the way I have just re-read it.
When we are strong we turn our backs on love and when we are in pain we are inconsolable as a teething child or someone facing sudden, tragic bereavement. The world seems to be turning in and there is nothing beyond the moment. For people in captivity against their will and through no personal fault, crushed by the loveless strong, it must be tempting to be overwhelmed by insatiable self-pity. And yet the stories of returning hostages are often the more inspiring as they bear witness to the indomitable human spirit.
No, my interpretation of the line is that it refers to our self-inflicted isolation, the prisons of our attitudes to life where we are both prisoner and gaoler. Self-confident in our own strength we turn our backs on one another’s support and have no need of God. Self-absorbed in our problems and everything we perceive to be wrong with our lot, we fail to notice that we are no different to others. We are blind to realising that together we can be mutually supportive. Introvert in our misery we ignore the bowed head of the dying Christ in his agony, giving himself to relieve us. We starve ourselves of the essence of humanity, which is love, by our behaviour and are effectively lost. Lost on our journey, lost to our friends and lost to God – or that is our view.
Friends tend to be longer suffering than we deserve and to hang on for us to regain composure, but that is nothing beside the patience of Christ who waits for us to surface from our desperate state and as we blink at the dawning light, reaches out to steer us on again.
A Prayer
Loving God, we pray that Christ may reign in our lives, helping us to find our way to true love in him where there is everlasting comfort in his arms. When we lock the door of our own, personal prison, remind us that we have the key and need not stay inside. When we feel desperate, give us the humility to utter a single cry for help, knowing that you will hear that cry.
We pray for Jesus’ sake, Amen.