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I experienced a period of overwhelming
terror – I was convinced that when
Samuel died I would lose my sanity. I
was brought close to a place that
hitherto I had only imagined and I
glimpsed what I now know,
emphatically, to be true. There is
nothing in this world anything like –
even remotely like – death.
There were many times when, with a
second son in ICU, or with both
seriously ill in hospital simultaneously
(this happened three times over the
years) I found myself more consciously,
desperately, dependent upon God than
I manage at other times, even though I
believe we each need to live with a
moment by moment sense of total
dependency upon Him. I discovered
that while we grit our teeth and grasp
on to Him, God, meanwhile is holding
us, and His is the grip that matters! His
the one that makes ours feeble and
fleeting by comparison.
Many years ago I went to hear the
WEC missionary doctor Helen
Roseveare speaking, and she told us
something memorable about her
experience of being brutally assaulted
by soldiers in what was then the
Belgian Congo. God did not give her
the strength to endure their cruelty
before the moment when she needed
Him to. His grace was indeed sufficient
– precisely when it was needed.
I have learnt something similar –
indeed it’s my most precious discovery,
and one that is constantly being
forgotten and rediscovered: much as I
would love to feel God’s presence as a
physical certainty, and see God with my
eyes and not just my spiritual sight, and
know perfectly His reality, all of these
are right there in the words of
Scripture. And they are evident in my
own history.
I see the tightrope of God’s words that
I have wobbled along and I see that He
did not, after all, let me plummet. In
ways that never cease to astound me,
those words bounce out of the pages of
my Bible with their unimagined solace.
And what catches my breath is rarely
related particularly to my conscious
need or longing – it is something of
God, vital and nourishing, in the meagre
crumbs of a plain meal. It is usually not
in the familiar places of Scripture that
one might turn to for comfort.
It could be just a phrase, such as “Jesus
was in the stern sleeping”, or “the God
of all comfort”, or the crowd’s reaction
to Jesus: “They were amazed at His
teaching.” Or even the sublime
intimacy of God’s words to Moses:
“Tell them to return to their tents, but
you stay here with me.” It might be the
exuberance of Elijah as he goads the
prophets of Baal, or the inspiring
confidence of Micaiah as he stands
alone among the prophets – his face
stinging from being struck – to deliver
words of fearsome truth before Kings
Ahab and Jehoshaphat.
It might be those wonderfully contrite
words of Nebuchadnezzar, “Now I
praise and exalt and glorify the King of
heaven, because everything he does is
right and all his ways are just”. Or the
movingly devoted concern of new
convert Naaman, as he apologises
because he will appear to bow to an
idol when the king leans on him.
Sometimes a mere look can conjure up
the superlative nature of God – the
On the surface is
merely unexceptional
words, but beneath,
quickened by God, is
the treasure trove of
His character.
look Elisha gave Gehazi when he
exposed his lie about taking gifts, or
Jesus’ face before he healed the man
with a withered hand: “He looked
around at them in anger and deeply
distressed at their stubborn hearts.”
On the surface is merely unexceptional
words, but beneath, quickened by God,
is the treasure trove of His character.
On days when I felt I could not survive,
I devoured hungrily such Scriptures,
and sometimes also the familiar
sustaining passages in the Psalms or
John’s Gospel. On occasions I even
wrote a verse on my hand in order to
focus on it until the day ended and I
could praise God for His mercy
through yet another day. Because I
memorise Scripture less easily than I
once did, I’m excited to have developed
the new habit of memorising hymns –
no doubt helped along by those daily
school assemblies that always concluded
with a hymn!
I began with those based on a psalm (Ps
23, 90, 100, 103) and then found
many others just bursting with sweet
doctrine (Immortal Invisible, O Love of
God how Strong and True, O worship
the King, to name just a few). Like
those energising passages of Scripture,
each hymn brings in its wake a radical
change of perspective and reminds me
how small is my largest problem beside
an infinite-sized God.
Indeed, when I look upward I am
silenced by that God-perspective,
though when I look forward I am full
of fear. When I look backward I am
comforted by the evidence of His
presence – silently steadfast,
unchanging, never-failing.
Morag Zwartz is author of The New Age
Gospel: Christ or Counterfeit?, Fractured
Families, and Apostles of Fear. She is a
member of Donvale Presbyterian Church.