The ubiquity of God

The Channel 4 documentary series 24 hours in A&E follows the cases of patients admitted to the A&E Department of a London hospital.

In last week’s episode someone commented that in a strange sense those who pass through suffering are enriched because, having experienced the fragility and uncertainty of life, they value it all the more.

Before Christmas, I wrote about the mini-stroke (Transient Ischaemic Attack) I suffered in November and my immediate reactions to it. A T.I.A. is not necessarily serious in itself, but has serious implications, indicating a risk of full-blown stroke or heart attack. I was immediately prescribed medication to reduce these risks.

It’s one thing to observe from the outside that people living with ill-health sometimes learn to value life more deeply, another to be able to affirm from the inside that this is true. But in my brush with my own mortality I have seen something of this.

After the T.I.A. I was left (as are some but not all mini-stroke patients) with a feeling of exhaustion and general debility. My brain was tired; there were free-floating head pains. After two weeks off work I felt a little better. Waking was no longer a return to the struggle I’d escaped at bed-time.

Over the next few weeks, periods of wellness alternated with days of weariness. I was learning to take each day as it came – be it good or bad – to be inwardly open to God, to seek to live to the full, savouring the gifts of family, friends, beauty, good things, accepting that one day I will die.

I was also learning only to do what needs to be done on a given day. I saw as never before the folly of squeezing each day full of busyness under the illusion that being busy today will clear the way for unbusy days in the future, the lie which holds so many of us in thrall to endless activity.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had much more energy, a renewed sense of wellness and well-being, and a great thankfulness to God for the many good things in my life. Why me? Why have I been so blessed?

In last week’s 24 hours in A&E there was no mention of religious faith. But there were plenty of questions which religion addresses. ‘It can happen to any of us,’ someone said, which begs the questions ‘Why does bad stuff happen to him, and not to me?’ The young doctor told us she hoped the outcome of people’s visits to A&E wasn’t pre-ordained – she wanted assurance that her best efforts could actually make a difference in life and death situations. And she admitted to being superstitious – in A&E things come in 3s and 7s, she said. 3 heart attacks, 7 strokes…..

These are religious questions. Why does bad stuff happen? Is everything random, or is there purpose in what happens? Are we merely cogs in the machinery of blind fate, or do our choices make a difference?

When bad things happen, we want to understand what has caused them, seeking the security of believing that it’s not all random, that there is some logical reason. Such an explanation somehow helps us feel less vulnerable.

But this begs another question. Is religion itself nothing more than the ultimate fruit of our desire to impose meaning on randomness? Wouldn’t the truly courageous thing be to accept that all is random, and to choose love and joy defiantly in the face of this terrible uncertainty?

Well, you can’t prove God’s existence. You can’t prove beyond all doubt the uniqueness of Jesus (though strong evidence points that way.) Ultimately it is a question of faith. Faith that despite appearances to the contrary God is with us in the randomness, that the words of Jesus have living power, inviting us to faith in him, to ‘come and see.’

So where was the uncredited God in King’s College A&E? God was there in the courage and hope and resolve of the patients, in the empathy of those close to them, in the skill and compassion of the NHS staff. Because God is with us we can make a difference.

The danger of speaking of the ubiquity of God – that God is everywhere, always – is that it can reduce God to the commonplace. But down the centuries religious people, certainly Christians have turned this on its head: because God is everywhere present, the ordinary is holy. Wherever we are, the holy God is in that place, though we may not know it yet.

Moment by moment, in suffering or in joy, we encounter the love of God which is, as Melvyn Matthews has written ‘broad as beach and meadow, wide as the wind and an eternal home.’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 30th January 2014)