Book Review: Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

Why, you may well ask, am I writing a book review for such a well-known and well-read book?

Spoiler alert: I suggest you read Jane Eyre before finding out too much in this blog!

First and foremost, to counter Elizabeth Rigby’s ludicrous criticism that Jane Eyre is an ‘anti-Christian’ novel. Criticism which, ironically, sheds a great deal of light on moribund Christianity in England that has suppressed true faith in England for centuries…bound up as it often is in formal, cold, religious traditions so unlike the Jesus of the gospels leaving many in Britain and the West generally, admiring Jesus but not church.

Brontë sets about uprooting false notions about Christianity in three key relationships, firstly exposing the cruel hypocrisy of Mr Brocklehurst, Jane Eyre’s headmaster at Lowood, who abuses his authority using scripture merely to control pupils whilst feathering his own nest, then with Helen Burns, Jane Eyre’s friend, and, finally, the off-course cleric, St John Rivers.

When Brocklehurst challenges Jane about her behaviour and how it could lead her to hell, he asks ‘What must you do to avoid it?’ Jane’s reply, dripping with sarcasm, is ‘I must keep in good health and not die’. Wonderful.

Later Jane finds her first true friend in a girl of the same age, Helen Burns, and, whilst she learns a great deal about faith in Christ from Helen, is critical of her passivity in the face of injustice. Helen, by contrast to Mr Brocklehurst, has her eyes firmly fixed on heaven: ‘God waits only for the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward’ or, ‘I can resign my immortal part to God without any misgiving, God is my father…I love Him, I believe He loves me’.

What I particularly like about how Brontë presents Jane at this young age, maybe fourteen, is that she is full of questions, she is open, and exploring…her faith is not fully formed. For example she asks Helen, ‘You are sure, then, Helen, that there is such a place as Heaven?’

Far from being an anti-Christian novel, this is an honest account of a fictional character maturing physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Later, after the marriage to Rochester is prevented and she leaves Thornfield, Brontë confronts Jane with yet another dissatisfying version of the Christian faith in St John Rivers, a man so dedicated to service as a Missionary that he completely misses God’s plan, to bless him emotionally and romantically with forming a relationship with the beautiful Miss Oliver, beautiful not only in appearance but in her character.

Jane extricates herself from St John’s demands and his alarming proposal for marriage, with customary straight-talking, ‘O! I will give my heart to God. You do not want it!’

A reply that also reveals that her faith in God is more solid, confirmed later as she prays later prior to her final journey from St John back to Rochester, now at Ferndean:

‘I fell on my knees; and prayed in my way – a different way to St John’s, but effective in its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit, and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet.’

Personally, I do not know of a sentence that describes true Christianity any more accurately.

As St Paul wrote ‘the sons of God are led by the Spirit of God’.

Brontë has demolished the hypocrisy of Brocklehurst, steered clear of the undue passivity of dear Helen Burns, and, in her rejection of St John, correctly distinguishes between dry duty demanded by cold formal religion and the fire and relationship of the true Christian faith.

By the time Jane Eyre is returned to Rochester her faith is more or less complete, she is spiritually mature and at ease with life, love, and marriage. She readily submits herself to Rochester as her husband having no fear that her individuality is under threat any more than Rochester is afraid of being dominated by a woman of independent means.

This is anything but ‘anti-Christian’.

Brontë has deposited a novel into the mix whose climax in the marriage between Jane and Rochester has more to say about the relationship between Christ and an individual than the journalist-critic Elizabeth Rigby could see.

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë: 1847

Elizabeth Rigby’s criticism: 1848

Steam on the Windowpane

It’s winter on the top deck
With the morning commuters
Yawning, respiring
Exhaling, coughing - and I,
Creating finger-art,
In our collective breaths
Draw a line on the window
And escape to an outside world
Of rushing trees and cityscape

On my way to fit snugly
With another,
A living jigsaw piece of
Flesh and vibrant clothes,
Smiles and sadness
To meander through the
Mystery of knowing someone
You can never fully know
To exchange words
To exchange a kiss
A hug
A steamy cup of coffee

After, a walk
Through a park brightly lit
In a January sky
Brilliant in its clean-air blues
Passing others and their dogs
Exporting tufts of breath
Nostrils and mouths at work
The rhythm
Of footfalls and arm-swings
Taking me to a graveside

It’s there that I discover
How to hold my tongue
And let my grandfather speak,
His advice still seeping up
From under, from inside
His interred frame.
A man with strong eyebrows
And a piercing gaze
With love simmering
In every harsh syllable
Of his few words:

‘Whatever you do, son, put some
Steam on the windowpane’

I sigh and wish he could see
His message left trickling down
On the number forty-two.
Advice from a hard life
Of personal victories kept
Far from public gaze
His pride, tucked away
In the soil that fed us
During the impoverished
Years, that bought
My school shoes
And hid his tears.

We Shall Rise

Escaping to the beach
Sandals and tee-shirt discarded
Looking down at the
Rhythm of the waves
Toes tipping over the jetty
My arms leap up and,
Free from the planet, I rise…
…and fall

Columns of sunlight pour
Through the water illuminating
Seaweeds waving with joy
Fish dart about
Iridescent in shoals, but
No sooner do I relax,
Calm and at home,
Than I rise

Wounded healers, fashioned
Somehow to sink like stones
To suffer shipwreck and sorrow
Our outer garments,
Facades and masks removed
O! Take us under Lord
Let us see life and light
As we fall

Until at home
Above and below
In season and out of season
Abounding or abased
Until we know You, truly,
In reverses and walking
Drenched and anointed,
Then we shall rise

And on that day
When the Sun falls, when
Dress rehearsals are complete
When we journey beyond
Our horizons, what we know,
And all is laid aside,
We shall rise

To face the One, whose
Garments were taken and torn,
Distracting the soldiers
His toes tipping over the brink
And arms stretched out wide
Proving for all eternity
That falling
Is only a prelude:

We shall rise.

Lost & Found

A long heavily stained
Desk, teak maybe
Stretched across the dingy
Office a flight of stairs
Under the concourse
Where life is faster

The man, an identikit
For all L&F officers?
Overweight, pallid
And unimpressed
A trained smile,
No deus ex machina,

No joy, and I wonder if
Anyone is waiting for him
Or whether we all
Look lost and this Earth
Is where we are deposited
Until Someone comes

 For us

Growing Towards the Light

Are you?
Is what he said
Straight in, session one
After small talk about the
Geranium on his bookshelf

And me prevaricating
Talking about auxins,
Anything
Except why I was there.
I thought session one

Would be…
Less poetic, less allegorical
You know
Less tangential
But he was straight in,

On my turf
Trespassing on purpose
Irritating the metaphorical
Edges of me, to flip me,
To see what’s underneath

Like the limpet
I was am will be…
Trouble is with these
Professionals
They charge enough

So silence is expensive.
I turned around
And said ‘Yes, I am.
That’s why I’m here’
His name, engraved by the way

On a brass plate, Sr. Garcia,
From Buenos Aries,
‘Call me Jesús’ he said,
His warm smile told me
Where to sit

I nearly knelt

Paris ’24 – 4th June 2023

It’s been a while and, no I haven’t been training at altitude, or investigating the legality of oxygenated blood transfusions prior to racing, or pulling enormous tractor tyres, or cricket-square rollers across the Downs, or anything remotely eye-catching.

I’ve just had an MRI scan on a dodgy nerve in my left foot, visits to two physiotherapists (shoulders and back), and an increasing range of hilarious exercises from the physios and an osteopath to keep me super-supple.

That’s the state of play of this 60+-year-old even attempting to return to running, let alone meet the qualifying time for the 10K ready for Paris ’24.

But I’m on the way back – hence the return to the blog.

3 x 5K runs and I’ve lopped 5 minutes off my first time just over a week ago. At this trajectory, I will break the land speed record for a Walrus in a few weeks and be outpacing old Labradors before you can say ‘Allez France!’

 The next step is to run 5 miles, not 5K, then 10K…by the end of June.

 Expect a follow-up report in detail.

Two Toothbrushes

That soft early morning light
Seems to catch things unseen
Cobwebs in a sway
Translucent green leaves
Shedding a fitting peace

That time of day
Requiring no speech
Facial muscles
Yet to recall
Quite what to do

An automatic pilot
Shuffles you forward
To a mirror, to a basin
To a shower as yesterday
Is washed away

And there they sit
Like living counterparts
Facing each other:
Two toothbrushes
Quite different

Yet revealing more than
Speech can convey. Bristles
Worn down on one side
This one, encased in unrinsed
Paste, contentedly untidy

The other, almost shining
Upright, ready for life and love
Disaster, and heartache,
Not quite comprehending
Her neighbour

A guest I am, immersed
In a forty-year marriage
For three mornings.
Unbeknown to them
I guess,

Who owns each brush
Standing as they do
Opposite, yet facing each other
In the morning light
Shedding a fitting peace.

It’s 9pm, Bristol

A cigar tip glows red in the dusk
As a puff of smoke exhales
Into the trees -
Whisky in hand he watches
As the rough and aromatic
Scents disperse.

Above, the trees seem to
Breathe the wind, in, out
And send creatures to
Fill the cooling air:
First a lone wood pigeon
Maybe the last of its kind

It’s plaintive echoes
Receiving no reply
A solitary Robin, out late,
Like the next thought,
Unexpectedly lands
Closer than a brother

The biters arrive:
Invisible flesh nibblers
Then silent, swift, skilful
Insect-hungry bats swarm
The Battle of Britain
Renewed in the sky above.

The cigar stub
Damp and dulled
Calls time.
Inner contentment
Seeps in like the
Rasping warmth

Of the golden measure.
Fingers exploring familiar
Ridges of the cut-glass
Unconscious of the
Gift just given:

May the peace of the Lord
Be always with you.

Bluebells on the Beach

In a blue-violet trumpet, and,
From aeons past,
In each pebble
Is the thought that thought of you
Is the light that gave you light
Is the temporary
And the unchangeable
You

In the one;
Colour and light,
Swaying in the breeze, there
For one deceptive purpose:
Seduction.
Your honey sap
The future trap.

In the other, granite grey,
Hard yet smooth
In your palm
A missile in the hand
Of God
Picked up and launched
Through my defences

The bluebell on the beach
Swept there by tides and
The four winds
Nestled against each other
Trampled by strangers
The congruent parts
Of a woman
Of a man

English Literature and Cold Turkey…Report One.

My normal routine: get up, kettle on, R4 on, either a tea-bag or looseleaf tea in small pot and, cereal, R4 off, wander into lounge and Ahhhh! That first sip of a cuppa to remove the night and start the day.

 About 11 am, coffee beans ground to dust, cafetiere in operation, and…Relax…with coffee and maybe a slab of Cadbury’s plain. Perfect.

 A normal day consisted of one coffee and maybe 5 cups of tea.

 Until Saturday.

The centre-of-gravity of this story is my attempt to pass A-Level English Literature. In a few weeks’ time I shall be sat amongst impossibly talented 18-year-olds trying to control my thoughts, telling my pen-writing muscles not to cease up, and (for a 65-year-old, the greatest fear) not having to ask to be excused more than twice in the 3 hours of exam hall torture.

 So…preparations – apart from intense revision – include:

1.      Fasting the day before the exam (let the reader surmise the reason why)

2.      A break from tea and coffee…i.e. caffeine, tannin, and all other diuretics

 Sensible?

 So, I Googled the likely side effects, the ‘cold-turkey’ side-effects of giving up tea and coffee:

 The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine? | Coffee | The Guardian

The scientists have spelled out, and I had duly noted, the predictable symptoms of caffeine withdrawal: headache, fatigue, lethargy, difficulty concentrating, decreased motivation, irritability, intense distress, loss of confidence and dysphoria. But beneath that deceptively mild rubric of “difficulty concentrating” hides nothing short of an existential threat to the work of the writer [Edit and exam reviser]. How can you possibly expect to write anything when you can’t concentrate?

Three days in and I can report, darn it, ALL of the above symptoms. I don’t know what dysphoria is but I’m not sure I care…the incessant headache, leg aches, lethargic waves that roll over one, and stranger periods of distress…darn it, it’s all true!

Three days in and I can report, darn it, ALL of the above symptoms

But I’m told this will ease after nine days…so…a week to go of hoping the benefits will outweigh the longing for that first taste of something better in the morning than the dried inside of one’s mouth and sour lips after a night’s sleep, snoring - and sneezing in the hay-fever season.

Meanwhile, it’s back to Othello, Jane Eyre, Post 1900 Poetry, Spies, Skirrid Hill, and Streetcar Named Desire and wading through critics of Patriarchal societies, literature as a Marxist class struggle, and attempting to view the above books through modern, post-modern, and meta-modern lenses.

The moral of this tale? Not enough energy to enter a debate about morals…until it’s over. The abstinence, that is.

Expect Report Two…when I feel human

Rabboni

Why come so vulnerable
Covered in straw?
You make everyone suffer
Your arrival took its toll
On Joseph, on Mary, and children
Extinguished by a king

 Why a mere carpenter’s son
Out of the way, up North
In Nazareth?
Why wait so long
An inert Messiah, watching
The blind lead the blind?

Jesus, why shun the limelight?
Why refuse the crown?
Those willing to honour the
King of glory?
Why relinquish riches, not knowing
Where to lay your head?

After all said and done
Why set your face to Jerusalem?
You stilled the storm, my storm,
Yet offered your wrists to nails
Your head to thorns
Your cheeks to spittle

And, risen, in dawn dark
Avoiding adulation
You dressed as a gardener
Trowel in hand,
Earth under your fingernails
And spoke my name

The beach…2 “Paddle Faster”

Closing my eyes I lift the paddle high
Above my head
A push sends me scuttling
Down the steep pebble incline
The sound like a waterfall
Hard round pebbles scraping the keel
Five seconds of acceleration and…
Into the wash
Into the lapping waves
Orange nose cutting through the surf
I paddle faster

Eyes open, blinking away the salt and Sun
Looking back at the hundred or so
Souls, large, small,
Young, old
Spiritual and secular
Clothed and almost unclothed
The distinct sound of a summer’s day
The beach, a playground for all…
Moments pass…then, turning
Away from the shore
I paddle faster

My fibre-glass capsule,
Skeg rope pulled tight
Water falling along the paddle
The only sound now, thumps
Of sides on wave, wave on sides
An exchange just beyond me
Not known
Until you permit yourself to be
Baptized in the ocean.
Paddling faster, deep and strong

Out here, away from voices,
One hears a Voice
Calling you onward, not back
Calling you home perhaps
‘Slip between the harbour arms’
The urgent voice, strong now,
‘Paddle faster!’
Has time come to lift my paddle
High above my head
To the light?

No. Not yet. It’s not time.
I’m headed East
With the tide and current
The wind making the sea alive
A fearsome fight
Five miles or so
Until, surfing, I ram into
Shingle, sand, and slopes
My interim home
Of a friend calling to me
‘Paddle faster!’

The Beach…i

Turquoise and white the waves roll in
crashing at shallow angles
along the shoreline.

Wandering among the shingle,
the seaweeds and beached wood,
a man, absent-mindedly,

smooth pebble in hand, is at home.
Quiet, lost in thought,
surrounded by the wet roar

Raiders of the Lost Ark…and the Three-in-One

The names we associate with the film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, are Harrison Ford, playing the archaeologist Indiana Jones, and Steven Spielberg the director, but it was Lawrence Kasdan who wrote Raiders (and co-wrote the Star Wars films The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens and others).

 Spielberg and Kasdan, it may not be surprising to know, are Jewish.

 Grappling as they did with the deeply Jewish angst over the lost Ark of the Covenant, Spielberg and Kasdan introduced to the world the biblical account that the ark of the covenant contained a power greater than any earthly power. One that, in the film, our hero, Indiana Jones, managed to prevent the Nazis from acquiring.

 The Ark, in fact, was a fairly small acacia wooden box laid in the Holy of Holies in the Temple overlaid with gold, containing the stone tablets engraved with the Ten Commandments, a pot of manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded. It was lost when the First Temple was destroyed in 586 BC…although Ethiopian Orthodox Christians claim the Ark is located in the Church of St Mary of Zion, in Askum, several hundred miles north of Addis Abiba.

The action is in the Holy of Holies…the Spirit of God witnessing with our spirit that we are children of God.

 From the perspective of the New Covenant, the physical temple, important though it had been, was merely an earthly copy of the heavenly original. Each part of the temple, therefore, has a present-day eternal counterpart including the three courts: the outer court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies, and, specifically, the ark and its contents held within the Holy of Holies, in the presence of the glory of God.

 If the acacia box represents the new spirit God has put in those whose faith is in Christ, the contents of the ark represent God Himself dwelling in each believer. In the New Covenant, the physical temple in Jerusalem has been replaced by believers: ‘temples of the Holy Spirit’ 1 Cor 6v19.

 If you had looked inside the box at the three objects, physically distinct and seemingly unrelated from each other, would have stared back, inert and unremarkable, however, the three objects represent three facets of God, a three-in-one reality.

1.      The tablets of the commandments – but in the New Covenant the engraves the law on our hearts (Jer 31 v31f). Paul wrote about the ‘law of the Spirit of life’. This is what is set loose in us, nothing short of God’s own life. And He doesn’t need an external written law (the tablets of stone) to know how to act!

2.      The pot of manna – representing the miraculous ‘daily bread’ or ‘bread of heaven’ given to the Jews as they made their way to the Promised Land from Egypt. Rather than praying for God’s word to come to us from outside, externally, God has Himself in our spirits and His word(s) shape our lives. It isn’t that we need His word for ‘our lives’; it is more that His word is our life. Jesus said ‘the words I speak to you are spirit and life’

3.      Aaron’s rod that budded – if the rod represents us in our humanity, like the acacia box made from dead wood, the miraculous life that comes from it is His life. True Christianity, true spirituality, starts when His life appears in us.

Attempting to live the Christian life – either as a believer or, maybe as a non-believer who admires the teachings or person of Christ – through your physical abilities (the outer court) or your soulish strengths (intellect, emotional passion, or sheer will-power), is missing the point.

The action is in the Holy of Holies…the Spirit of God witnessing with our spirit that we are children of God.

The Lord’s Prayer – with new eyes

I can’t shake off the version I was taught as a child:

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
forever and ever. Amen.

I can’t, for example, say ‘forgive us our debts’ as some versions put it. Or replace ‘thine’ with ‘yours’ easily, it’s so ingrained. Not that the newer versions are inaccurate. There’s an interesting debate to be had over ‘trespasses’ or ‘debts’ in translating Greek and Aramaic…but that’s for others to argue over.

This post is about looking at the very familiar Lord’s Prayer but with new eyes…

We tend to think that this prayer is answered if we have faith when we pray, rather than know in ourselves that this prayer has already been answered and we are now to live it out in our lives.

This post is about looking at the very familiar Lord’s Prayer but with new eyes…

For example ‘give us this day our daily bread’. We might pray this as if it is our prayer that extracts from God our daily bread, whereas it has already been given. The challenge is for us to believe it has been given not that it lies in the present or near future…if we ask.

Jesus’ mission was to bring the Old Testament or Old Covenant to a close and inaugurate the New Testament or New Covenant as prophesied principally by Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

In the Old Covenant , the temple consisted of three parts. First the outer court for the people, then the Holy Place where the priests ministered, and then the Holy of Holies where the High Priest was permitted to go once a year, with the blood of a lamb, to make Atonement for Israel.

In the Holy of Holies, apart from God’s presence, there was the ‘ark of the covenant’, a wooden box overlaid with gold, with three items inside.

1. The tablets of stone on which the ten commandments had been carved

2. A pot of manna – the bread miraculously provided each day during the Exodus

3. Aaron’s rod – a dead piece of wood, a rod, which miraculously budded

In the New Covenant, each believer is a temple within which God abides by His Spirit. Jeremiah and Ezekiel gave us the details of the New Covenant:

The days are coming when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.
This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.
(Jeremiah 31 v 31f)

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes
(Ezekiel 36 v 36,37)

If our physical bodies relate to the outer court in the Old Testament temple, and the Holy Place relates to our souls (that precious part of us that gives us individuality, our minds, emotions, and will), our spirit is represented by the acacia box in the Holy of Holies.

When we believe and are born again, our old heart of stone is removed and we are given a new heart, a new spirit. Our ‘new’ spirit is joined with His Holy Spirit so that, just as in the Holy of Holies in the physical temple where God’s presence dwelt, so, now, the Holy Spirit dwells in us. Genuine Christianity turns out to be a spirit/Spirit operation.

‘Do you not know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?’ 1 Cor 6 v19

Jeremiah and Ezekiel as prophets, both saw that the tablets of stone laid in the acacia box were really just figurative copies of the heavenly original, the Old Covenant foreshadowing the New Covenant in which we live. Now, in the New Covenant, the law of God is no longer external carved out in stone, it’s internalised; the Holy Spirit writes the law on our hearts and we learn a whole new way of living…just like Jesus. As C. S. Lewis said we have become like ‘mini-Christs’.

Equally, God has placed in us the heavenly reality of the pot of manna, the miraculous provision of ‘daily bread’, manna from heaven. The Lord’s Prayer has been answered in the New Covenant. Now, wherever we are, whatever our circumstances, we have the pot of manna in our spirit, and it pours out eternally the living word by the Holy Spirit. It is not something we need to pull down from heaven it has been given.

This post is not really about Aaron’s rod but when Jesus instructed his disciples to pray ‘deliver us from evil’ the bible tells us the last enemy is death. But now we have ‘rod that budded’ in us. Resurrection is our new normal.

Jesus was the first prototype of this new humanity of ‘living temples’, now in Christ, we have become like Him…not because of our goodness, holiness, or our religious performance, membership, or attendance of any church…but simply having faith that this is what God has made possible through Christ.

We are not a huge stone-built temple stuck in one location, in Jerusalem, but mobile temples, through whom God pours out His life.

Paris ‘24 - 19th March 2023

Once again it’s a Sunday. March 19th 2023. And once again I have returned to Bristol Harbourside for a chilly start to the morning.

Walking. Not running.

My hope in December to return to running a 10K by the end of January was put back in its box and the lid closed quite firmly. The right knee decided to be the next part of my Olympic Physique to complain at the rigorous pre-Olympics training schedule and went on strike.

One X-Ray later – no obvious signs of wear and tear – I decided to start walking instead of running and adopted the 10K a Day in March challenge minus one day off per week. I’ve skived two or three other days but will hope to make up the difference in kilometres by the close of March.

Routes thus far include:

1. Blaise – on my doorstep
2. Black Mountains above Crickhowell
3. Dorset – from Fontmell Magna
4. Henbury to Bristol Central Library

Snowdon, the Matterhorn, and the Pyrenees to come…?

So, progress towards Paris ’24 must be faced with a dollop of Gallic Shrug, a smidgen of hope, and a full tank of thankfulness for all the previous running injuries and recoveries, a miracle of healing thrown in, and a generous ladle of faith in God.

We press on.

Knocked down but not knocked out.

That is, of course, if Paris ’24 goes ahead. It seems the IOC is acting as an entity as powerful as a nation-state stating, quite firmly, that it will give its ruling on Russia’s participation independent from all other bodies. One wonders, if they rule that Russian athletes are to compete under their national flag, whether France will arouse herself from a Gallic shrug, and say ‘Non!’ and leave the IOC out in the cold.

A real-time blog: The Letter to the Hebrews – final post, VII, Aaron’s Rod

To summarise, the writer is addressing a problem that has occurred with the recipients of the letter, a group of Jewish believers who seem to have stopped growing. He reminds them of God’s dual purpose for them. Firstly that God is ‘bringing many sons to glory’ and, secondly, that they need to move on from milk to meat - to ‘move on to maturity’.

In the Old Testament the ‘glory’ was contained in the ark of the covenant held inside the Holy of Holies, the innermost room in the temple, this being an earthly copy of the heavenly original. The ‘ark’ was a wooden box (acacia wood) covered in gold. Inside the box were the Tablets of the Law, a pot of manna, and Aaron’s budding rod.

It is a picture of Christ and therefore of us, in Him.

Our bodies, souls, and our new human spirit given via the New Covenant, combine to make merely a container for His glory. We are overlaid not with gold – but the glory of God. And on our insides, in our spirit, are the Law, written not on stone but by the Spirit in our hearts, not a pot of mann but the bread of heaven, the word of God, and, like Aaron’s dead stick that budded, resurrection life.

We, who have become sons of God through Christ, are glory pots.

‘…we have this treasure in earthen vessels…’ 2 Cor 4 v 7

The glory residing in the most unlikely of containers. We have become mini temples with God dwelling inside:

‘Your body is the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you’ 1 Cor 3 v 17

There was only one occasion where He permitted a few of his disciples to see His normally invisible glory – the Transfiguration.

‘His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them’ Mark 9 v3

But the truth is, most of the time the glory of God resided in Christ unnoticed: lying as a baby in a stable, or as a refugee fleeing from Herod, or facing hostility from the synagogue in Nazareth, or the Pharisees as they opposed Him, or being whipped and crucified, and later lying dead in the tomb.

But death could not hold Him. Aaron’s rod budded.

It will be similar for us. We suffer, and as we operate as sons of God in this world in Christ, we move on to maturity through obedience to the leading of the Spirit. We may or may not have occasional glimpses of the glory, but finally, like Jesus, we enter into the glory that has been ours all along.

‘I consider the present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us’ Rom 8v18

Aaron’s Rod

Winter’s lost its hold:
Yielding, exhausted,
Blackened branches held up
In wordless surrender.
Even death must sleep
Naked trees, stripped annually
Of leaves and blossom and fruit
Unable to hide far-off horizons
From prying eyes

The birds, though, know
A different story
Twigs, flying mission on mission,
Clamped and carried in beaks
Of hope
Nests appear before
The camouflage of Spring
Spares them, covers them
They know, the birds

Eruption from death
The first buds, a day away.
Like Aaron’s rod,
As unstoppable as unlikely,
Dead as we are Eden’s nightmare,
I am the Life, like a heavenly parasite,
Displaces our winters
With His orchards;
Trees of life once more.

A real-time blog: The Letter to the Hebrews - 6

Premiership football teams in trouble look for a new manager. Each one, José Mourinho, Ferguson, and now Pep Guardiola, Arteta and others transform their team…often backed up with a few dollars!

The writer to the Hebrews, searching a round for a suitable new manager for his flat-lining believers – ‘by this time you should be teachers, but I can only give you milk not solid food’ – lands on Melchizedek.

Melchizedek? Who? Chapter 7 explains all, I’ll summarise key points below:

‘Jesus has become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek’ Heb 6 v 20

Melchizedek (King of Righteousness) was King of Salem (Salem means ‘peace’) without genealogy, having neither beginning nor end, like the Son of God, he remains as a priest forever.

So, Jesus, King of Righteousness and King of Peace, the Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End, is the true High Priest.

In the Old Testament, the High Priest entered the Most Holy Place, known as the Holy of Holies, in the temple once a year, which was only an earthly copy of the heavenly original (Heb 8 v5)

But Jesus, the true High Priest, carried his own blood as the Lamb of God into the true holiest place in Heaven to secure our salvation:

‘By one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified’ 10 v 12

Being ‘in Christ’ we have become like Him, united with Christ and we have become, as Peter wrote, ‘partakers of the divine nature’ or, as my friend Chris Welch puts it, ‘Melchizedek particles’, caught up as we are in the High Priest according to the eternal order of Melchizedek.

‘…having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus…having a High Priest over the house of God let us draw near with faith’ Heb 10 v19f

Unlike the previous ‘orders’, the Aaronic and Levitical priests, who only visited the Holiest, it has become where we abide. It is here that we ‘move on to maturity’ dependent entirely, as was our initial salvation, on Jesus’ High Priestly ministry, and not our effort or ‘dead works’.

The rest of Hebrews is written assuming that the recipients of the letter have woken up and realised that falling back under the old Levitical priesthood, temple worship, the Law of Moses will not make us like Christ.

The illustrations the writer employs from this point on in the letter all describe forward motion and the future:

Faith to run the race

Brotherly love to continue

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever

For here we have no enduring city but we seek the one to come

As ‘Melchizedek particles’ we are moving on. Like Jesus said, ‘The wind blows where it wishes…you cannot tell where it comes from or where it goes…so it is with those who are born of the Spirit’.

Next and final Hebrews blog: Glory is spelt strangely, not as we might imagine

Father Across the River

It is not for me to question
Your soul, encased in history
Put to the sword, not once,
Barely to survive.
Deep-set priestly eyes
And heavy Orthodox voices
Filling Cathedrals
With more than sound
Grieving over your sons
And daughters drift away,
Enticed like the Prodigal

It is not for me to question
Your soul; sad anger
Consuming many
But hear this song
Deep calling to deep:
Your son will return
If you let him go
If you let him inherit
If you let your enemy
Feed him scraps
Only to discard him

It is not for me to question
Your soul; precious to me
But turned inward
It rots.
Unburden yourself
Of all I have given you
Let the chanted Psalms
Run backwards through you
Or your sorrowful tears
Will drown many
In the Dnipro