He said not: "Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be afflicted"; but he said: "Thou shalt not be overcome."
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, ch. 68

As we come to the close of our series of nighttime meditations it is right that we should reach the peak of our endeavours. We are not here simply to enjoy ourselves; we have also to make other people enjoy us, to obtain real delight in our presence so that they also may bring delight to the world.

Man was made for Joy and Woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the World we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.

So wrote William Blake in his Auguries of Innocence. We would not appreciate the good things of life were it not for the overshadowing evil that so often mars our delight. Once we have come through a major surgical operation or a severe illness, we can start to appreciate the wonder of health and also the precious gifts we have been privileged to experience. These include not only material possessions and human relationships, but also the integrity of ourself and the faculties we have to appreciate the world and travel into the vast mines of inner space.

Jeremiah's mission was, on the surface, a complete failure. His compatriots would not heed his prophetic utterances, they detested him to the point of planning his murder, and in the end the Holy Land was ravaged by the Babylonians while he was forcibly carried off to Egypt by a recalcitrant band of surviving Israelites, nearly all of whom were to be destroyed by the Babylonians later on. But the privilege of writing about God's new covenant with the Jews, in which the law would be set within them and written on their hearts, when a resurrected people would arise who knew their Creator directly and were spontaneously forgiven by him (Jer. 31.31-4), was of much greater importance than all the pain the prophet had to endure. The same scheme could be employed to trace the lives of all the great ones in the world's history, whether mystics, prophets, artists, musicians or scientists.

Without temptation, travail and affliction we would remain mere children; not the children who are to receive the kingdom of God but simply selfish, troublesome youngsters who act as if the whole world should revolve around them. Quite a number of highly successful men in public life are weaned from this childish selfishness only when retirement and bodily ailments cut them down to size, as they depend increasingly on the kindness of those who look after them. In other instances, domestic tragedies remind the outwardly prosperous where the true source of happiness lies.

Two sayings of Francis Bacon are worth reflection. "It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him; for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely" (from his Essay 17, "Of Superstition"). "Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New" (from his Essay 5, "Of Adversity"). Many images of God, including that of the savage potentate of the early Old Testament, are indeed contumely (a disgrace), but as the experience of humans grows, so a more amenable figure arises, as in Psalm 103 and the prophecy of Hosea. In Christ God shows himself as the Suffering Servant (prophesied in Isaiah 53) who takes on the full limitation of a man, in the end dying an agonizing death to the glee of most of the bystanders. He shows us something more than prosperity and happiness, that the end of the human, which we all have to face as death beckons us on, is resurrection to divine stature as we approach more fully the One who stands unceasingly alongside us.

I thank you, Lord, for the privilege of life, of humanity, and the promise of sharing in your very being. May the remainder of my days be so ordered that I draw ever closer to your incarnate Son in service and love, so that I may know you ever more intimately.