Is My God Too Small?

I am now too afraid to travel.

Yes, you have read that right. I'm talking about travel, whether over a long distance across the UK or even abroad with my wife Alex. Or a more local trip alone by train across thirty miles to London or even just twelve miles to Reading. Indeed, what has happened within the last few years, and especially within the last six to twelve months? After all, as my regular readers are aware, I love to reminisce on my past journeys, whether it's a cycling trip to the coast, walking through the Medieval and Roman streets of Jerusalem Old City, Hiking the Grand Canyon or snorkelling over the Great Barrier Reef. Or how could I omit such an unforgettable moment when I stood at the foot of a waterfall as it cascades within the midst of a rainforest of Blue Mountains National Park?

One of several waterfalls I saw Down Under, 1997.

But now the very thought of travel is sending shivers down my spine. What is it which has transformed a spirited adventurer into a mass of quivering jelly?

Fear.

But fear of what? A heightened chance of harm? Being mugged and robbed? Even stabbed in the back? Or falling ill due to a bug or even a snake bite? Or breaking a bone in an accident? A need for hospital treatment while abroad? No, it's none of these. I was prepared to face such risks during my backpacking days, and praise to God, I managed to get off very lightly. Rather, it's the worsening of my wife's illness, despite her dependence on strong painkillers. 

Like the time a couple of weeks ago, when I was having a Cappuccino at Costa Coffee at our hometown of Bracknell. The mobile phone rang. It was a distress call from my wife, urging me to come home quickly. Fortunately, I was just a twenty-minute bike ride away from home. Once home, I found her on the sofa, her phone next to her, and unable to move. I managed to administer the medicines which were out of her reach, and by adjusting her position, successfully brought her out of her crisis without the need of an ambulance. But supposing I was in Reading or London when the phone call came through? With the need for train travel, there was no way I could arrive home in good time. There was no other alternative but for her to dial for Emergency Services Ambulance.

Sounds simple? Until she realises that she cannot get up to open the door for them. Yes, what then? The trouble is, there is no need for any kind of prompt to trigger such an attack. It is always imminent. And that is made worse by the fact that it is just us two living together. We have no offspring old enough to take action if their mother was to suffer an episode whilst I'm out. This is the terrible result of our society's brutal attitude towards a parent or both parents suffering from Asperger's Syndrome. This is a mental condition when the sufferer finds group socialisation difficult but has an obsession with a particular interest, maybe two or even three. Can you tell what my principal obsessions are? However, in our case, both of us are sufferers. And because of this, we lost our daughters through State intervention, to be adopted into another family.

Our eldest daughter is about to come of age. Unless she is enrolled for a university, she would have been a useful asset to our home. Even so, our second daughter, also being a teenager, would also have been very helpful in such a crisis. Our third daughter, although not yet a teen, would have still been old enough to contact Emergency Services. No doubt, the loss of our family through means of knowledge by the "experts" is a real and terrible loss indeed. Furthermore, such academia held by these professionals was originally written by psychiatrists and psychologists who have engaged in the Occult and held occultic connotations. I believe that to destroy a family without a proper justifiable reason is a wicked thing to do. I never believed that Asperger's Syndrome has any cause for our children to be taken. After all, history would reveal many parents with Asperger's and other disabilities who had successfully raised their children. 

I firmly believe that the loss of our beloved daughters for adoption, together with our being on the autism spectrum has been the dual-cause for my wife's illness. Back in 2013, she spent as long as four months as an inpatient at Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, after a series of gradually developing periods of a backache had finally taken away her capacity to stand upright and walk. Four months in hospital with the appropriate treatment has only partially restored her mobility to where a wheelchair is necessary for all outdoor trips. A now severe muscle-tightening backache comes and goes, and this is often caused by a physical jolt, the shaking of a vehicle such as a bus or a train, or by negative thought patterns, or even if she is in a happier mood.

Fortunately, I'm not ignorant of this issue, for I have studied it in a book written by a Christian doctor.* Formerly known as Psychosomatic Illness (meaning upset mind-sick body), it is easy for me to relate her present condition to the tragedy of losing our beloved daughters. Therefore it came as no surprise to me that after reading of the possibility of short supplies of medicine after Brexit as well as a possible takeover of the National Health Service by American private companies, the sheer anxiety she felt afterwards, resulted in a major episode where she not only suffered a severe backache but the tightening of her neck muscles causing a possibility of asphyxiation and her lips began to turn blueish. There was no other choice. The ambulance was called, which arrived promptly, as her threat of asphyxiation has put her as a First Grade category patient.

We spent much of a sleepless night in A&E. By the small hours, she was well enough to return home. I didn't get into bed until five o'clock in the morning. The following evening a friend called over the phone. Although an Arminian, he does have a genuine care for our welfare. He then kept rabbitting on about our overwhelming concerns about the news and current affairs. How are our concerns about the aftermath of Brexit has, according to him, obscured God from the reality of our lives? Simply because God is never acknowledged in the news. According to him, it's not enough to believe that Jesus is the Christ, and so I must keep on exercising my faith to experience any fullness of God. After several minutes of uninterrupted talk, I finally hinted for him to wind down. He seemed disappointed as if he had failed to edify me, and I put the phone down.

In other words, to him, salvation must be maintained by works. The snag with such a worldview is that the Arminian Christian can be prone to judging another person or group of people. In my case, my obsession with news about Brexit shows that according to my friend, I have little or no faith in God.

But could he be wrong, or misinformed?

Because while we were in the hospital, I leaned over Alex's gurney and prayed hard, saying that God is my refuge and strength, my rock, my fortress and a strong tower, into which the righteous run into and are safe. (Proverbs 18:10). I was convinced. It takes an occasion like this one to realise the powerful truth in those words. Before I thought about them, I was feeling very low, depressed and wallowing in self-pity. But when I declared aloud those words from my heart, over and over again, the depression lifted, and I felt far more hopeful.

The strong tower illustration is a good one for the name of God. During ancient times, the Canaanites, as well as Israel, had built walled cities which includes a thick-walled tower with a small doorway. When the city was under threat by an invading enemy army, the people of that city fled into the tower, and they were safe.

A tower in ancient Jericho, visited June 1976.

I do wonder, however, where is God in all this. Perhaps my friend over the phone has a point. I'm constantly living on a knife edge. I panic if her medicine runs low. There was even a case over two years ago when a female GP suggested for her to come off one of her main daily pills. When she arrived home, Alex burst into tears, leaving me to call on the prescription secretary at our surgery to explain that to come off this particular medicine would revive some of her previous symptoms, mainly of involuntary convulsions and further back pain as a direct result. The GP had not only rescinded on her intention but left our surgery altogether for another location, and my wife's medication continues as always. When I shared this with another church friend, he eventually asked me,
Where is your faith in God?

Oh, so easy for a man who is financially secure, has a healthy wife and healthy grown-up children. But for someone such as myself who had lost all three of his precious daughters for adoption, and to have his beloved so much younger, suffering a neurotic disorder which has no apparent cure - well, to have faith can be a little more challenging!

Therefore, if I were to say, as any spiritual-minded Christian would say - that I have full joy in the Lord - well, I wouldn't be telling the whole truth, would I? There are times when I literally tremble with fear of the future, like a boat which had lost its rudder, drifting aimlessly and without direction in the vast ocean. Then to hear on the news that a no-deal Brexit could jeopardise our medical supplies. Just thinking about Alex walking into a pharmacy for a renewed prescription, but instead receive an apology, causes me to tremble with fear. It really does. While all this is going on, there are Christians - yes, Christians, the ones who attend church each Sunday, who are also jumping up and down in rage over our Prime Minister's latest deal with the EU, bidding us to write letters to our MPs to vote down the deal in the Commons, and to go for a no-deal exit from the European Union.

Maybe my friend over the phone was right after all. It does look as though I am not the only one who lacks faith in God. It seems like most hard-core Brexiteers have no faith in him either, or else they wouldn't protest so loudly as they do. And it seems to them that leaving the European Union is far more important to them than the idea of Heaven and Hell, and for the sheer vanity of life under the sun as so well expressed by King Solomon. We are going to die. We are all going to die. There is no way of escaping this truth. Isn't it much more important to be concerned about other people's eternal state than to fuss over the sovereignty of England?

I could ask: Is my God too small? Is your God too small? Even Isaiah was faced with the dilemma:
Behold, The Lord's hand is not shortened, that he cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that he cannot hear...
Isaiah 59:1.

But the prophet answers his own question by listing the multitude of sins committed by the faithless. And really, none of us is less guilty. But seeing us in such a state, he sends his Son to make atonement for our own helplessness. And as the later verses of that same chapter foretells, this same Jesus will come again to rescue all believers and set up his throne in Jerusalem. Israel will then be the true sovereign nation, not England, which itself will be subjected to Israel. Brexiteers, do take note!

Jerusalem, 1994. One day England will be subject to its rule.

These are great promises we both can look forward to. But as I admit, at this moment it does feel as if God is too small, and his arm too short and his ears too dull to take any action. Yet history is filled with Christians who have suffered, imprisoned, and died for defending the truth of the Gospel. Maybe that's it. If I suffer the affliction of the body, my faith in God could well remain strong. But to watch my wife suffer an incurable neurotic illness afflicting her beyond any form of control, well that is another matter.

I need to grasp that well-known verse written by Paul to the Romans:
And we know that all things work together for good to them who love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28.

That means Alex's neurotic ailment and my care for her both play an important role in working for the good for us who loves God or wants to love him. Too often, the reality of life, the stormy ocean of the political world, huge tsunami-like waves battering the ship, and threatening to sink it, makes us forget that God has only to speak, and the waters will flee away, or as Jesus spoke to the storm over the Sea of Galilee, and the air had immediately become calm and the water smooth. Just by a command from God's mouth. The same can apply to our situation.

But instead, he allows these episodes to happen. Not because his arm is too short, but because these are lessons for us to learn to trust in him for physical as well as spiritual life and salvation of the soul. Chances are that God will not heal us on this side of the grave. But until we step over that line and enter into glory, God will use these experiences to make us a more Godly couple, strengthening our marriage bond and made partakers of his holiness.

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*Doctor S. I. McMillen, M.D. None of these Diseases, 1963, 1980, Lakeland Publications.