on spiritual abuse

 This coming Sunday is designated Safeguarding Sunday in the Church of England.

In the Gospel reading set for the day, Matthew 25.14-30, Jesus gives a masterclass in spotting spiritual abuse—

and yet, I strongly suggest, this parable of the talents is universally misinterpreted in ways that nurture and endorse a culture of abuse.

This year, Safeguarding Sunday arrives against the backdrop of yet another celebrity convicted for sexual abuse, and with another—who cannot be named for legal reasons, but whose identity is widely known—not far behind. [Update: now made public; acknowledging that power imbalances are ‘inevitable,’ denying abusing that imbalance, denying being a predator; and claiming to be devastated that women should have expressed hurt or anger towards him.]

We have a power problem in our culture. These celebrities are not simply the odd bad penny or rotten apple, but products of the normative cultural scripts—such as the entire canon of popular music since the 1950s. I suspect that Brand is genuinely confused as to how and why, having lived faithfully and enthusiastically according to those normalising and validating scripts, he is now (rightly) being punished.

Within the Church, our primary normalising and validating script is the Bible. This is not a bad thing in itself—indeed, it is good—but it does mean that we ought to take how we interpret these texts seriously and with humility. Where we see power abused in the church—spiritual abuse of people, to exercise control over their lives, by which a church becomes a cult—the conditions are always nurtured by how scripture is taught.

In Matthew 25, Jesus is preparing his disciples for an imminent crisis in the life of the nation, under which they will find themselves thrown out of the temple and the synagogue, out of the community they have belonged to their whole lives. He says, then the kingdom of heaven will be like this: and tells a parable about ‘foolish’ bridesmaids, shunned by the wisdom (bridesmaids) and hope (bridegroom) that the Messiah will galvanise rebellion against Rome, and, through bloodshed, establish peace. They will find themselves shut out, with only a lamp (Jesus), oil (the Holy Spirit) and the dealer of oil (God the Father).

Jesus then tells the same story, in a different way. This being excluded will be like...

A man of considerable power goes away hoping to extend his sphere of influence. Perhaps he has secured a book deal, or is doing the conference platform rounds. He elevates three others to carry on his programme in his absence, and, when he returns, he claims for himself the credit (literally, financially) for their labour. After all, they owe their success to him, the opportunity he gave them. One of the three, however, has had misgivings as to the great man’s character. He has come to realise that his master is harsh; that he takes what is not his, the work done by others. This servant decides that he will give back to the great man what he had given him, nothing more, nothing less. He wants out. The great man is incandescent with rage, calls the junior ungrateful, wicked, lazy, accuses him of wasting the gain that was rightfully due the great man himself. He calls the junior worthless, and orders that he be removed, shut out; that as far as anyone within the organisation is concerned, he is now to be considered dead to them.

Beloved, this is exactly how spiritual abuse operates. It is a masterclass in how to spot it.

And yet, we have always and everywhere been told, the great man is God; God has given you gifts, to exercise for his glory; and if you do not, you will face the consequences.

Parables have a super-abundance of meaning, because God is greater than we can possess. But they can only speak truth. A parable cannot present God as evil, for God is not evil. God does not treat us harshly, not demand from us, not call us worthless, nor bring death. It is the thief who comes to steal and kill and destroy. God comes to us, in the human person of Jesus, in vulnerability and humility, laying down his life for the sake of the world.

Yes, God gives us gifts, to use to bless our neighbours, and to God’s glory. But we don’t get that from this parable. I would go so far as to say that the image of God most commonly portrayed in the exposition of this parable is heretical. It is certainly dangerous. Because if God behaves in this way, it entirely justifies the actions of spiritually abusive leaders. Our texts are normalising and vindicating.

Ah, some will say, but God does pass judgement on us. This parable is followed immediately by the parable of the sheep and the goats, and the goats are sent to eternal fire. But, this is a parable of the nations, and how they treat Jesus’ brothers and sisters. Those nations who welcome them will inherit the kingdom of heaven—which is to say, their nationhood is dissolved, or at least purified. Those nations who do not welcome them are sent to eternal fire—that is, all that is opposed to God is consumed. We see this, in the coming to an end of empire after empire. Indeed, it is also my personal hope: that all that is within me that is not godly will be consumed by the flames; and that I would know such union with God, as found in Jesus, that, without losing my identity, we would be inseparable.

Where is God in the parable of the talents? God is with those who weep and wail—comforting them, and wiping away their tears; and, ultimately, vindicating them and bringing about justice.

Where is God in our present day, when powerful people exploit others for personal gain? See above: God is with those who are vilified for the sake of truth, of righteousness.

If our churches are to be truly communities where a culture is nurtured where all may flourish, we need to address our power problem. Jesus gives us all that we need to do so.

Matthew 25.14-30

14 ‘For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them;
15 to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.
16 The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents.
17 In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents.
18 But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
19 After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them.
20 Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, “Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.”
21 His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.”
22 And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, “Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.”
23 His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.”
24 Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed;
25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.”
26 But his master replied, “You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter?
27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.
28 So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents.
29 For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.
30 As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

on worldly wisdom and divine foolishness, part 2

 

The wisdom of the world has been described as the Enlightenment. This is the goal, to emerge from the darkness of the past, to arrive at some superior state, in relation to those who went before us.

The foolishness of God is to sit with the light that shines in the darkness, and which the darkness has not overwhelmed.

The wisdom of the world says it is not wise to share our resources, the world is one of scarcity and we must hoard more than we need, against a rainy day.

The wisdom of the world says that those who happen to share the darkness with us are a threat, to be shut out, should the opportunity arise for our happiness, our comfort.

The wisdom of the world says our peace is secured through the destruction of our enemies.

The foolishness of God proclaims that there is enough provision in this world for all to live securely; that we share this planet, and that we thrive together or not at all; that rest is gifted to all; that the future does not belong to the powerful but to those who will humble themselves.

The parable of the so-called wise and the so-called foolish bridesmaids is a fitting tale to disturb us in our Remembrance, our refusal to learn from the cost of shedding innocent blood.

 

on worldly wisdom and divine foolishness, part 1

 

From chapter 21 onwards, Matthew’s Gospel records increased hostility from the religious authorities towards Jesus. The passage set for tomorrow, Matthew 25.1-13, falls within this context, where Jesus is setting out a clear difference between his understanding of what kind of Messiah the people should expect, and the political power games of the religious elite.

Now we come to a parable about ten bridesmaids waiting in the night for the arrival of the bridegroom. Within Seconds Temple Judaism, nuptial imagery was used to describe Messianic hopes and expectations. This parable focuses on the arrival of the bridegroom. Within this section of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus has already told a parable about a king who threw a wedding banquet for his son, at which one of the guests is removed outside the city walls to the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. The consequence of this parable is that the rulers gather in the home of Caiaphas the high priest, and plot to have Jesus killed. I have set out elsewhere (and re-shared today) why I read the king in this parable to be Annas, the ‘king-maker’ behind the high priest role; his son-in-law Caiaphas to be the son in the parable; and Jesus himself to be the guest who is evicted and thrown into the valley of destruction—a foretelling of his crucifixion.

Now, here again, Jesus picks up the wedding banquet trope. Again, I read the bridegroom as, at one level, Caiaphas, and, at another level, as the Messianic expectation of the people. This is not to say that anyone believed that Caiaphas was the Messiah, but that the expectation was of a religious-political rule such as was currently being held by Annas’ family until such time as it could be exercised without constraint. For Annas, and his family, that did not mean open revolt against Rome, as that coming Messiah would supplant them.

Of the ten bridesmaids, five are ‘wise’ and five are ‘foolish.’ This, too, I would suggest, falls within Jesus’ turning the wisdom of the world on its head; to the claim, made explicit by the early Church who would reflect on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as demonstrating that the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of the world.

Which is to say, we might want to find ourselves among the foolish bridesmaids rather than among the wise ones.

Indeed, this is, I would suggest, Jesus preparing his followers for the coming (soon) experience of being shut out from the temple community.

All ten bridesmaids have lamps and oil. The lamp is a Proverbial motif representing the word of God: your word is a lamp to my feet. Jesus’ disciples John will claim that Jesus is the Word, become flesh. Oil is a motif representing the Spirit, poured out by God on his anointed leaders, such as kings and high priests.

In the darkest point of the night, the bridegroom arrives, and the bridesmaids are roused from sleep. The wise bridesmaids, who knows how things work, are unwilling to share their oil with the foolish bridesmaids, and instead tell them to go to the dealer, in the middle of the night, to buy more oil. This echoes another parable, in which someone goes to a friend in the night in hope of bread, which Jesus explicitly tells us symbolises God giving the Holy Spirit to those who ask.

So, in this parable we have ‘wise’ bridesmaids who will not share their resources, and a bridegroom who refuses to recognise half of the wedding party.

And we have half of the wedding party shut out in the dark, where they must rely on the lamp of God’s Word and the oil of God’s Spirit, which they have received directly from God himself.

The first group may feel secure, and are certainly celebrating for now. But, again, Jesus has spoken woes over those who currently enjoy the reward they have already received. And Jesus has predicted the destruction of the temple, within the lifetime of his listeners.

Jesus begins this parable saying, ‘then [after weeping and gnashing of teeth] the kingdom of heaven will be like this...’ and concludes, ‘keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.’

He is preparing his followers for a kingdom that embraces being shut out, because being shut out will be our experience, whether we are willing to embrace it or not.

As the kingdom was, so the kingdom is, and so it will be. The foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of the world. The weakness of God is more powerful than the violence of the world, than the exercising of political power.

May we be foolish, with God, as God has revealed himself in Jesus.

May we live undefended lives in the dark. May we mourn, and be comforted; weep, and have our tears tenderly wiped away by Love.

Matthew 25.1-13

25 ‘Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.
2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise.
3 When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them;
4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.
5 As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept.
6 But at midnight there was a shout, “Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.”
7 Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps.
8 The foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.”
9 But the wise replied, “No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.”
10 And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut.
11 Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.”
12 But he replied, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.”
13 Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

See also: 1 Corinthians 1.18-31

18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, 23 but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

26 Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, 29 so that no one might boast in the presence of God. 30 He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’

 

on finding and being found

 

Jesus’ parables are stories with a super-abundance of meaning. They cannot mean whatever we like—as Archbishop Michael Ramsey put it, “God is Christlike, and in Him there is no unchristlikeness at all.”—but they do mean more than we can contain.

Luke records a parable involving a shepherd and a lost sheep, and another involving a woman and a lost coin.

By now, if we are at all familiar with the Story, we know that Jesus is both the Good Shepherd and the Lamb of God. This parable, then, has meaning in which he is the shepherd, who comes in search of us when we wander far from God, and brings us home; and a meaning in which Jesus is the precious thing we have become aware is missing in our lives, for whom we search, and find with great joy. It turns out that in our finding Jesus, we are found by him. There is also, perhaps, a meaning in which Jesus is both shepherd and sheep, the ‘alpha and omega’ of the parable. Even this does not exhaust meaning here.

This parable is followed immediately by another, which is the same parable expressed in different terms: a woman, and a coin. We conclude, therefore, that Jesus is both the woman and the coin. These are, perhaps, less familiar images than the shepherd and the sheep; but we might be reminded of women in the Scriptures, and stories about how they act, and we might see Jesus revealed in them, in ways we were previously unaware of. But, again, Jesus is the one who searches for us in the dark corners of this world, and the one for whom we search.

One of the purposes of the parables is to train us to see Jesus—as he is—in the everyday experiences of our lives. To find Christlikeness in washing clothes (where do those socks go, in the machine?) or searching for a document poorly filed somewhere on your laptop; in walking up and down the supermarket aisles, and losing ourselves in a novel or TV drama; in redundancy and divorce, in being misunderstood, in all the mini deaths that precede our dying, and in death itself—and resurrection.

The letters written to the earliest churches testify to this superabundance of meaning in our lives—we, on earth, are seated with Christ in the heavenly places; nothing [insert long list] can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus; now to him who is able to do far more than all we can ask or imagine—all of which points us back to Jesus.

May we find, and be found by, him today, in whatever circumstances we face. May we know his welcome, and the joy of heaven.

Luke 15.1-10

15 Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.
2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’
3 So he told them this parable:
4 ‘Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?
5 When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.
6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.”
7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.
8 ‘Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?
9 When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.”
10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’

the Day of the Lord

 

There is a tradition, in this country, that military standards (flags) are ‘laid up’ in churches, where they hang from high above until the fabric disintegrates and falls to the floor below. This takes considerable time, and is a real-time physical expression of letting the past go. A measuring of the healing process.

In a previous place I served, before my time, the request had been made—and permission given—to do some restorative work on a standard. The flag being in poor condition was considered disrespectful. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the tradition. We do not routinely remember conflicts that pre-date the First World War in the same way that we remember that and subsequent wars, which we refuse to let go. Our festivals of remembrance have taken on a defiant claim to immortality. This is a strange hill to choose to die on.

This is ironic, not only given that we die but also given that God comes to us as a human, willingly embracing our dying, uniting godself to ourselves in death that we might rise with him in glory.

The Day of the Lord is the death of Jesus. The Day of the Lord is as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went I to the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake. The Day of the Lord is the death of God, who laid aside immortality, and whom death could take but not keep hold of.

Give me a god who joins themselves to us in death as in life over any other god, any day of the year. And may I be willing to lay down my life—to reject self-preservation; and to demand immortality from no one—for love of those around me.

Amos 5.18-24

18 Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord !
Why do you want the day of the Lord ? It is darkness, not light;

19

as if someone fled from a lion,
and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall,
and was bitten by a snake.

20 Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light,
and gloom with no brightness in it?

21 I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

22 Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.

23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.

24 But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

 

on rehearsing death

 

My sports watch would monitor the quality of my sleep, except that I cannot bear to sleep with anything around my wrist, and it cannot do so lying on my bedside table. My wife’s watch monitors her sleep, though it can be a little grouchy first thing in the morning: this morning, it informed her ‘no sleep detected,’ before revising its opinion.

Every time we allow ourselves to succumb to sleep, we experience a little death. A rehearsal of our death. We surrender consciousness to subconsciousness, trusting that we will wake again. And, asleep, we are still alive. But our experience is different in sleep.

Nightfall, too, is a little death, the day surrendering to the night, light stepping back so that dark can step forward. And the night, too, is fully alive: with stars blazing in the sky, if only we did not hide them from our awareness by insisting on keeping artificial light burning; and with nocturnal creatures going about their business—for the world that God created and calls good is incomplete without their presence, unseen, for the most part, by the day-dwellers, who catch only a fleeting glimpse of a fox at dawn, a hedgehog at dusk.

So it is with the dead. They are alive, in Christ. As fully alive as we are—indeed, more so, for our conscious minds resist being fully alive so hard, out of fear.

There is something magical about the night, and something wonderful about the life that continues beyond the troubled light of this present age in which we can see just a step beyond where we now stand.

May the dead, who are alive in Christ, rest in peace and rise in glory.

And may we, with them, in this world as much as the next, rest in peace and rise in glory.

 

on letting go

 

November is, in the rhythm of the church year, a mini-season of the Saints, and of Remembrance.

I have attended some very large funerals recently, both Christian and humanist. One of the things that strikes me about humanist celebrants is their belief that no one is truly gone while their story lives on in our memory. That seems to me to place an unbearable burden on the living, on those who are bereaved.

Everyone we know will die; and we cannot carry them all, as the monks of Lindisfarne carried Cuthbert’s imperishable remains in his coffin all around the north of England for over a hundred years, after their home was invaded by Vikings, before settling in Durham. Far from being urged to keep carrying, the bereaved themselves need to be carried, at times.

To paraphrase words familiar from national acts of Remembrance, we grow old, and weary, in ways the dead do not. And with distance, more and more of those who knew the deceased think of them less and less, if at all—grow weary—until only the closest mourners are left, carrying the memory alone.

Is the loved-and-departed one becoming smaller? a ‘thinner’ ghost? do they undergo some prolonged death after death?

The Christian claim is that past, present and future, and earth and heaven, are held together—knitted together, inseparable—in the person of Jesus. These things—and all who dwell in them—are remembered by God in him. As such, we believe that we are and remain united with our dead; and that—precisely—this is not dependent on our remembering them. Indeed, we are free to forget them, in time: literally to release them over into God’s remembering.

Dementia runs strong in my wife’s family, and it is statistically likely that she will, one day, forget who I am. (God knows, some days she tries to.) This will not diminish me—though, of course, it will sadden me—and, indeed, it will not diminish her: she will remain, in this world and the next, held within the love of God in Christ Jesus, from which nothing, including death, or memory-loss, can remove or harm us.

To remember, then, is not so much to recall episodes from someone else’s life—though this is another aspect of the joyful fusing of past and present—as it is to be reminded that we are grounded in Jesus, along with those whom we have loved, and those whom we have failed to live as we ought.

Far from carrying the dead with us, we rest in peace with them, now, and will one day rise in glory with them.

This November, I shall ‘remember’ the saints with thanksgiving, not least by ‘forgetting’ them into the hands of Love.

 

seeing Jesus

 

‘See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”’

Jesus, Luke 13.35

Jesus is slowly, purposefully, making his way to Jerusalem—the City of Peace—in full knowledge that he will be killed there, by those who believe that violence is the best, perhaps only, means to the end that is peace. And there are some Pharisees—a group who have a complex relationship with Jesus, both drawn to him and repulsed by him—who come and warn him that death awaits him there. He acknowledges this, but informs them that he remains undeterred. And he concludes with the words above.

The house, the household or community, the Pharisees oversee has been ‘left’ to them. The word has multiple related meanings, including to forgive, to release, to divorce. The household has been released from their oversight, or forgiven sin-by-association, or perhaps it is the Pharisees—who have warned Jesus—who have been forgiven and released.

And Jesus says that they will not see him (again) until they can say Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord.

Or, they will only be able to see him to the extent that they can speak blessing over one whose coming reveals the character of God.

The one who comes. The word to come is in the middle voice, which is to say it describes something that we do for ourselves by which—in the process of doing—we are changed by something or someone external to ourselves. As we come and go—as we go about our lives—we are being transformed.

Who is this one? It is, at one level at least, every human being. As John tells us, in the opening of his Gospel, Jesus is the Word, the One who is God from God, Light from Light, the One by whom all things were made; and who has become flesh. One of us. God, in whose image we are made, has, in him, become human, and gone about his business, the business of being human.

And if you would see Jesus, as a group of Greek visitors to Jerusalem once asked Philip, then we will do so to the extent that we are able to see and to bless the face of God in every human face we meet in the course of our comings and goings in the world, and no more.

However marred that image has become, through sin, even beyond recognition. As Isaiah points us to see him.

That is, perhaps, easy and welcome enough in the faces of those I love. Harder when I face myself in the mirror as I brush my teeth. Harder still when confronted by truly vile people who seek to provoke me to remove certain people to secure peace for people like me.

Like the Pharisees, I am both drawn to and recoil from this vision of God’s mercy.

 

pearl

 

This week, Jo and I are celebrating our thirtieth wedding anniversary. The pearl anniversary.

Jesus spoke about the kingdom of heaven in parables, or exquisite short stories that leave you wanting more. He is hidden in every one of them, because, ultimately, to discover the kingdom of heaven on earth—the human vocation to share in God’s sovereign activity in this realm—is to meet the One in whom being one with humanity and one with God is held as God always intended.

Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like someone stumbling by chance on treasure buried in a field and abandoned there, who covers it again, and buys the field at face value so as to make the treasure their own.

Jesus himself is the treasure, buried in the clay from which we are made and left in obscurity for decades.

Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who searches the world for fine pearls, and, finding one of exceptional beauty, sells everything he owns, to be able to purchase this one prize beyond all else.

Jesus is the pearl. The One, formed in secret and through the discomfort of the grit of an ordinary life, the suffering he bears with us, transformed into a display of glory, translucent, shimmering in the sun. The One whom, once beheld as he is, is such an enticing mystery that we must keep him near us at all times.

The pearl beyond price. Which is, it also turns out, how he sees you, as he beholds your life, your suffering and the way you bear it, the mystery that God would take this thing we would not choose and not allow it to be wasted, but changed from a means of evil intent to a means of grace that will not let evil have the final word.