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Tuesday, June 10, 2025

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Taking a turn around the duckpond, I pass a couple sitting quietly: she, on a bench, he, on a mobility scooter; his voice diminished, his breath as thin as a reed. Love is sorely pressed at times, but love endures.

Continuing along the drifts of yellow irises that line the edge of the pond — ‘past their best now,’ but what does that matter? — I pass a daughter feeding her elderly mother (again, no longer ambulant; again, a moving chair) with a spoon. A tender act of devotion. Our eyes meet in recognition: not familiarity, but one human bearing witness to the love of another human for another human.

The park is a safe place, a place of welcome and embrace. A place for stillness (as well as movement: the child being swung around on a suspended tyre; dogs pulling their walkers along). A place for quiet (not sterile noiselessness, but the song of small birds).

A place where we can be our true selves, made for love shared between us; a true self that is found — whether we recognise it as yet or not — hidden within Christ. This is the truest thing that can be said of you or of me.

I have been working on a translation of Romans 5.1-11, one might say from a disability theology perspective. It is rough and ready, as Paul’s writing is rough and ready and does not conform to the eloquence translators have sought to impose upon it, by violence.

‘Having been declared innocent, we therefore have assurance of peace/wholeness/wellbeing, drawing near to God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have assurance of access to the loving-kindness we are firmly established in, and rejoice in anticipation of the dignity that is God’s — not only, but we rejoice in affliction [in being constrained by our circumstances], perceiving that constraints bring about endurance; and endurance, proof of character; and proof of character, anticipation. And what we anticipate does not shame us, because the affection of God has been poured into the heart of our being, because the Holy Spirit has been given to us.

‘For Christ continues to exist in our state of weakness, in accordance with the time when he died for the benefit of the ungodly. For with difficulty will anyone die for the innocent — though for the benefit of the good, perhaps someone would be bold enough to die. But God demonstrates union with us, of his affection for us, in that — we, still falling short [in our own strength] — Christ died for our benefit. By extension, even more abundantly, having now been declared innocent within the shedding of his blood [‘Father, forgive them,’ spoken from the cross], we will be rescued by him from opposition/vengeance. For if we, existing as enemies/in hostility, were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, having been changed/reconciled, shall we be delivered [from danger, into safety] within his life. Not only this, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we now receive this exchange/reconciliation.’

 

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