CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: Presence offers comfort when anxiety threatens to overwhelm
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Last Monday morning, my free-floating anxiety was looking for things to connect with.
The work we were having done in the house, the dodgy tyre on the car. But then I sensed again that God was with me. I was not alone.
I could approach the new day’s uncertainties in calmness and peace. Adventuring with God.
At COP26, when it begins in Glasgow on Sunday, world leaders will discuss their attempts to meet greenhouse gas emissions targets.
What does faith, and specifically Christian faith, contribute to the discussion of global warming, the greatest crisis ever to face the human race?
Calls for justice, for repentance, for respect for the whole of humanity and for creation itself are vital. Sharing a vision of our sweet, broken world healed and saved is vital.
But the fundamental insight our faith brings is that there is a Presence, a solid rock, an unwavering light, an inextinguishable flame of love.
“God” seems too small a word for such an immense reality.
What I glimpsed on Monday morning – the peace and freedom God’s presence brings – is true not just for individuals, but for families, cities, nations, the whole global community.
There is something, someone there, who will endure when world and cosmos are no more, someone whose presence is our hope.
In response to those who mutter “nonsense”, I can point to many people of profound intelligence who do believe. But it seems that the embrace of God’s reality comes not through reason and argument alone (though both are important) but, as I experienced again on Monday, through the gift of enlightenment.
This gift is given to all who seek – and also to the many who have not yet dared to seek.
I also rediscovered on Monday that sensing God’s presence puts my busy-ness into context. My actions become less a striving, and more a joyful flowering. (Easy for me to say in the tranquility of retirement!)
But so it is with climate change. “What can I do?” we say. “The problems are so immense.”
Knowing that the enduring God is with us, we do not panic ourselves into inaction. Living in sync with divine reality as Jesus did helps us see where we can make a difference in small but unique and love-focused ways. Jesus models for us a life lived completely in touch with God, his actions an expression of life with God at the centre.
Even if this life were all there is, living in sync with the love, the light, the fire is the route to a humane, fulfilling life. But we believe that as God endures, so at one with God we will endure when heaven and earth have passed away.
