Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength;    he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.

(Habakkuk 3: 17 – 19)

On Saturday we read these extraordinarily pertinent words as part of our daily morning prayer. Habakkuk is prophesying about a nation and country that will be destroyed by war and by the betrayal of their calling. He foresees the rise of Babylon, its invasion of Judah and the devastation and the subjugation this will bring. All seems hopeless and lost. Reading through the book day by day over the last week has seemed very familiar, like hearing about what is happening in the Middle East now. And alongside the reading, as we have interceded for the world, I have felt that same kind of dismay and powerlessness that I think most of us feel when we listen to what is happening in Iraq and Syria, let alone all the other theatres of war in our world.

But then Habakkuk surprises and jilts us into a different point of view in the very last verses of the last chapter. Suddenly we are looking out from a wider horizon. Almost seemingly as an effort at self-determination, Habakkuk states, that despite the signs he “will rejoice in the Lord; (he) will exult in the God of my salvation.” He reminds himself that God is his strength. With a determination to persevere in faith he states that he will not give up on hope for the future because ultimately God will be there to help him.

Habakkuk might have prophesised around 607 BC but his word is a gift and a challenge in our time. Encountering events as horrific and fearful as we see through our media, feeling the same kind of powerlessness we might feel, perhaps being tempted to give up on God or at least believe that God doesn’t care / isn’t interested, Habakkuk determines otherwise. His action reminds me of a message scrawled by a Jewish author who hid from the Nazis in a dark and damp cellar in Cologne, Germany, which was discovered not long after the end of World War II.

“I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining. I believe in love even when not feeling it.

I believe in God even when He is silent.”

The biggest victory of evil is to destroy hope. The most effective response we can make is to determine to persevere in faith and hope, following Jesus, practicing the things of the kingdom: peace, mercy and justice and knowing that our strength lies ultimately not in ourselves but in God.

Attention is the rarest and purist form of generosity. Simone Weil

Jesus said to Martha, “Marta, Martha, you are anxious about many things. Only one thing is necessary.” Martha, the sister of Mary, had been banging about noisily and huffily, and eventually complained to Jesus that her sister was not helping her. Instead of taking Martha’s side Jesus condoned Mary’s behaviour, saying she had “chosen the better part.” She was attending to one thing and one thing only, Jesus himself.

Many people feel secretly pretty sympathetic to Martha, who was, no doubt, trying to get a meal ready for Jesus and to be a good hostess. But Mary was practicing another kind of hospitality: that of paying their guest full attention. We might secretly think she was still doing the easy thing. Which one of us would not want to sit down and give Jesus our full attention! But that is to assume that Jesus was doing the pastoring. As a dear friend of Jesus, Mary could have been the one looking after him: gently listening to him, his needs; caring for him in his tiredness.

We use the term “paying attention” and rightly, because it costs us something to give attention, whether it is to the person in conversation with us, the road we are walking down, the people sitting alongside us on a train, the News, or our times of prayer. Real attention demands first that we try to wake up to the present moment and secondly that we keep watch over our ego’s desire to jump in, to take over; to make everything about me. Real attention is about creating a sense of space and spaciousness, a hospitable place, in which any transaction between myself and the other can take place – has, if you like, room to breathe.

This is never more so than when we are practicing attentiveness (mindfulness / contemplation etc) in prayer. At times, everything in us is fidgety and impatient. We long to get up and go off and do something “meaningful.” What is the point of sitting here and waiting on God? It seems such a waste of time. But it is at this point of resistance that, if we stick with it, we begin to comprehend Simone Weil statement above. We are doing our best to attend to God without most of the time feeling any response from him. In R S Thomas’ words, we are more likely most of the time, to experience God as a “great absence.” It takes generosity on our side to go on practicing attention when there seem to be no visible results. We think we attend for God’s sake. It is only when we continue in the practice that we realise that there are results and that actually we are receiving much more than we are giving.

Giving attention is pure because it is single minded, rather than pure in a cleanliness way of meaning. It is rare because it demands such an effort and we live in a world that constantly distracts us and pulls us into the “many things.” It is generous because it is about giving all of ourselves to the other without necessarily any reward, “save that of knowing that we do your will.” But as in everything our generous God gives us, whether we are attending to people, a tree in blossom or God himself, in the giving of attention we always receive far more back.

I love the story of Elijah when he is so fed up, exhausted and miserable that he says to God that he just wants to lie down and die (1 Kings 19). He has reason to feel thus. He has just done prolonged battle with the priests of Baal and been on a physical, emotional and spiritual high. He is bound to have a very human reaction of feeling overwhelmed by exhaustion and depression, and he does. This is what happens when we become for a brief time, unbalanced in the way we live.

One of the big complaints people have is that there is a lack of balance in their lives. We talk all the time of life/work balance. Many of us know we do not take enough exercise, eat the right food and waste our leisure time doing non-life enhancing things. We long for balance in our lives, the sort of equilibrium that we imagine should be / could be normal if only we got some kind of rhythm and discipline into our days. Perhaps this is why there is a growing interest in new monasticism. We imagine that the timetabled life of the religious is better balanced. But St Benedict, the founder of classic monasticism found he had to get up in the middle of the night if he wanted to have any personal prayer time. He was just too busy dealing with all the problems of his community to find time during the day.

I think that the balanced life is a myth. It certainly isn’t something Jesus preached. He didn’t say the kingdom of God is mercy, justice, peace and balance. Jesus’ own life was a constant balancing act of trying to find time to be alone with his Father, from whom he was resourced, amidst the demands of a very busy schedule. His days I am sure were planned but Jesus always had to be prepared for the unexpected. If Jesus seems to have been able to stay internally in balance whatever came towards him, it will be because he took time out and centred himself by his relationship with his Father. He tried to teach his disciples to do the same.

Our lives have times of intense, sometimes overwhelming activity, which may lead to stress and tiredness. Life does throw ‘wobbles’ at us, some of which are very serious and take a long time to come to terms with. All this is normal and we are not supposed to be able to cope endlessly. We have to stop and recognise we need rest.

But out of such times also come all sorts of insights and growth. We are told that a certain amount of stress in our lives is essential for creativity and emotional health. Indeed, you could not walk if you did not throw yourself out of balance momentarily with every step you took. The kingdom of God is justice, mercy and peace. We might find more peace if we stopped putting impossible demands on ourselves by seeking for a balanced life but simply accepted that moving in and out of balance is how life is. Like Jesus, we need to find what will give us stability when life inevitably throws something at us. Like Jesus, we will probably find the only answer to that is a closer walk with God, especially when it all gets too much.

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, “My son, the battle is between two “wolves” inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”       (A Native American Metaphor)

During the week we were reading in daily prayer from the letter of James, all about the destructive power of the tongue,

“How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.” (James 3:5b & 6)

We all know the temptation of the “wolf” tongue, which takes our evil and spreads it, magnifies it and reinforces it. We feed the bad wolf every time we dwell on the negativity in our head and heart but even more so when we allow it onto our tongue

Today our Sunday gospel reading has been from John’s gospel (John 6: 24-35) where Jesus describes himself as the “Bread of Life”.

It is all about the ways in which we “feed” ourselves, our bodies, our hearts, our minds, our thoughts and feelings. We can feed on the bread which gives us and all the world life or we can feed on malice.

God feeds us all the time, if only we spend time with him and listen. On Monday, I was told the story of the two wolves, all week we listened to James’ letter set as the daily reading. Today we are reminded to feed on Jesus, the Bread of Life. God has certainly been trying to get a message across to me all week. What has he been saying to you?