This week is Mothering Sunday, and our readings are Psalm 34.11–20 and Luke 2.33–35.  Their connection to the theme is not hard to spot - the opening words of this section of the psalm refer to those who are listening as 'children', and the words from Luke are part of Simeon's interaction with Mary in the temple precisely because she is the mother of Jesus.  We're firmly in the territory of parent/child relationships.

Interestingly what's presented of that relationship is an honesty that it's not always easy.  Simeon pulls no punches in warning Mary that the mothership she is tasked with is one that will lead her to pain and suffering - and she is not alone in that, this Sunday is one that is a challenge for many for just that reason, so please do spare a thought and prayer for those who will find it a time of suffering rather than celebration.

The psalm is also quite clear that the 'children' it's talking to (about?) are not the best behaved - if they were they wouldn't be in need of the advice and warnings being offered.  Again, that is not something unique to this psalm: I suspect none of us lived childhoods that were entirely innocent.  

What I find interesting, though, in reflecting on my behaviour as a child, distilled through the lens of my experience as a parent, is that there were things that at the time felt very naughty, or that I was managing to get away with in secret, that were, in fact, neither.  As a very innocent example, I remember those moments of adrenaline as I heard footsteps coming up the stairs 'late' at night, and had to get the light switched out quickly and quietly enough, and arrange myself into fake sleep smoothly enough, to hide the fact I'd carried on reading long after 'lights out'... (I know, real naughty, right?)  I now know my kids do exactly the same, and that they now think they're getting away with it...

I wonder if that sense of hiding things, and 'getting away with it', creeps into our relationship with our heavenly parent?  The same sense of delusion that he doesn't know what we're up to if we're clever, or sneaky enough to mask it?  The real danger there (besides the clear insanity of thinking we can pull one over a God who knows literally everything) is that thinking in that same way can lead to the same sense of fear and anxiety if we hear him coming up the stairs, or drawing near in any other way.  We can become distracted by the ideas that we're not good enough, or that we're going to get told off, or punished if we let him draw close. 

In a sense we're not wrong - the sorts of behaviour that instinctively lead us to hide from a holy God are precisely the sorts of things that pain him, and, in the words of the psalmist, those against which he turns his face - but remember what he did with that pain.  Just as in Simeon's warning to Mary, in his role as a parent God, hanging on a cross, allowed a spear to pierce his side that the pain of our sin might be borne not by us, but by him; that we might be forgiven.  

We can become so distracted by the fear of getting caught, that we forget that we are already caught - he already knows! We need to remember instead that if it is something that bothers him, he's already dealt with it. So let's be honest about our behaviours, let's face them with openness in his presence - and where we find those that we want to hide, let's ask for his strength instead to change them, and become the people he creates us to be, the people we really are.  Let's turn our attention not to the one verse that seems to offer punishment in this psalm, but to the many, many verses of encouragement and grace.  There is no pit, even of our own making, in which he is not willing to join us, and help us back up and out: When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears,

and rescues them from all their troubles.

The Lord is near to the broken-hearted,

   and saves the crushed in spirit.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous,

   but the Lord rescues them from them all.