The other day a rather old and disfigured looking gecko appeared on our balcony wall. On close inspection I noticed that is was tail-less! That’s a fascinating thing about geckos.. Some species of gecko have this interesting defense mechanism: they will drop their tail if threatened or if their tail is grabbed. The dropped tail will actually wiggle and twitch on the ground. This tail loss distracts the predator, allowing the gecko to get away while the predator is left holding just a tail. Of course, if you try to grab a gecko by the tail, the same thing is likely to happen. Not the only cause, the tail can be dropped because of bullying by other geckos, stress or fear, illness or infection.. The gecko doesn’t handle pressure or problems too well at all, seeking rather to flee away from either….Little did I know, although my wife did see a story in the appearance of this little creature which resulted in me taking the photo, and she was quite right but little did she know she would become part of the story!
In the early hours of Sunday morning, I awoke to find Lorraine in the Living Room of our apartment strapped up to our portable blood pressure machine..I discovered her heart rate had hit the roof and after an hour of her heart racing out of control things had not improved. By 5.00am we were in the ‘Urgencias’ of the Hospital in Adeje and as is the usual way here, Lorraine was whipped away in a wheelchair having almost collapsed as she entered the door. I was left on my own in the waiting room and as many will know from your own experience what was really only a short time felt like a lifetime of pacing and twiddling AND worrying!!!
I have nicknamed our gecko ‘Fred’ for a couple of reasons that I hope will become apparent now! One of them is in honor, if you could call it that for an admired author! I have the utmost respect for and am greatly indebted to the writings of Frederick (Hope he doesn’t mind me calling my little gecko Fred after him???? I’m confident he won’t when I think of his often wicked sense of humor (NB the US spelling)!!!)) I have recently become acquainted with his writing and have been challenged by his sermons as recorded in ‘Secrets of the Dark’. I am going to quote in a moment or two from his sermon, ‘The Church’ Page 146ff but even as I am putting pen to paper or rather finger on keyboard, I have noticed his recent facebook post and wow, talk about appropriate..Look it up……https://www.facebook.com/Frederick.Buechner.Center/posts/629373457113193
He begins with these words…” "Have no anxiety about anything," Paul writes to the Philippians. In one sense it is like telling a woman with a bad head cold not to sniffle and sneeze so much or a lame man to stop dragging his feet. Or maybe it is more like telling a wino to lay off the booze or a compulsive gambler to stay away from the track.
Is anxiety a disease or an addiction? Perhaps it is something of both. Partly, perhaps, because you can't help it, and partly because for some dark reason you choose not to help it, you torment yourself with detailed visions of the worst that can possibly happen.”
The article of course concludes with what we understand is the reality of the Gospel message and confidence in the knowledge that God is with us ..ALWAYS and we need not fear but even in the midst of the roughest storm we Christians can know peace..HIS PEACE.. “Yet "the Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything," Paul writes, who was evidently in prison at the time and with good reason to be anxious about everything, "but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God."
You know that..I know that…better than most perhaps? As a Pastor I have been with people in the middle of hugely difficult circumstances and have endeavoured to encourage and comfort them through those circumstances by reading from and reminding them of Scripture..BUT you know sometimes folks we, and when I say that I mean ME!! I have to tell you that while I know the Bible and I know the God of the Bible, and I trust Him with heart soul and mind, in the early hours of Sunday morning I sat in that waiting room a shaking, worrying wreck..AND I’ve been there before, beside the incubator in which lay our dying first born son, Stuart. Outside the Operating Theatre into which our son David had just been taken. At the doors of Craigavon Hospital have driven, I reckon way beyond the speed limit to get my injured daughter Julie to casualty..In the Labour Ward of Coleraine Hospital waiting for Joanne giving birth to Matthew who when born looked like he would never make it!!! AND you know I have a list that would take up the rest of the day recounting, days like those, as I am sure you have too???
In his sermon, ‘The Church’ Buechner records for us the 12 Disciples beginning with Simon and then says this so poignantly, “Those were the people Jesus started His church with, as Matthew names them anyway. We know little about them and would give so much to know more…..They’ve had a pretty bad press over the centuries, and by and large they seem to have deserved it. On the night of the arrest, for instance, not one of them apparently raised a finger to defend their friend except Peter, who cut the ear off one of the High Priest’s slaves with his sword, which can hardly have made matters anything but worse and might have led to worse still if Jesus hadn’t told him in effect to cool it…… But of course the other reason for their bad press is that they never seem to have gotten any of His points very well, or if and when they did get them, never seem to have lived by them very well, which makes them people very much like you, if I may so, and also, if I may say so, very much like me. That is to say, they were human beings. Jesus made His Church out of human beings with more or less the same mixture in them of cowardice and guts, of intelligence and stupidity, of selfishness and generosity, of openness of heart and sheer cussedness (Stubborness! Who was it said the US and UK are two nations divided by language??) as you would be apt to find in any of us……It’s a point worth remembering……It is also worth remembering that even after Jesus made these human beings into a Church, they seem to have gone right on being human beings. They actually knew Jesus as their friend. They sat at His feet and listened to Him speak; they ate with Him and tramped the countryside with Him; they witnessed His miracles; BUT not even ALL of that turned them into HEROES. They kept on being as human as they’d always been with most of the same strengths and most of the same weaknesses”
Doesn’t that encourage you??? It does me…
Oh not because of my humanness and my constant ability to get things wrong BUT the fact that God knows my humanness and my weaknesses and my failings and He loves me just the same. He accepts the shortcomings, not that He wants to leave me like that, Oh no!!! He who has begun a work in me, says Paul, HE is going to finish it…I will be perfect ONE DAY..in the meantime..in other words of Paul, those I posted on Sunday morning, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” 2 Corinthians 4:7-10
AND my anxiety on Sunday morning was soon lost as faith took over..and the picture I saw was Peter, who had been so victorious in being able to walk on the water but now sinking in the very same water and in response to his cry of faith, seeing the hand of Jesus reach down and pull him back up….
I think those of us in Church Leadership, we are wrong to have people believe that we never have doubts or fears, or worry or cry or have questions we cannot find an answer for….
The other reason I nicknamed the Gecko ‘Fred’ was a song I remember from way back…Bernard Cribbins recorded it in 1962 called ‘Right said FRED’ telling the account of three workmen, one of whom was Fred who tried and tried to shifted some large article, like a grand piano or such down stairs and despite doing everything from removing doors to knocking down a wall they just couldn’t move it..The song finishes with this verse;
"All right," said Fred, climbing up a ladder
With his crowbar gave a mighty blow.
Was he in trouble, half a ton of rubble landed on the top of his dome.
So Charlie and me had another cuppa tea
And then we went home.
They gave up and as the dialogue bringing the whole thing to a close says, the reason they failed was;
(I said to Charlie, "We'll just have to leave it
Standing on the landing, that's all
Trouble with Fred is, he's too hasty
Never get nowhere if you're too hasty.")
Don’t be like Fred, either of the song or the gecko…Don’t be giving up too hastily, God hasn’t and don’t be too hard on yourself either, God isn’t..BUT don’t be afraid to admit that sometimes life does get scary and you might not handle it the way you should, and you might just think, here we go again…you want to throw off your tail and run…Go on do as Paul exhorts us even in your most difficult situation, “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:10-11
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