Nigel Steady
My favourite verses in the bible are from Matthew Chapter 6 starting at verse 25: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” I went through a period in my life when I was losing jobs through redundancy at an alarming rate. I just seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Manufacturing Industry was not the place to be working in the 80’s! We weren’t exactly starving but we’d got to a point where we had to pay the mortgage but didn’t have anything left to sell. I was feeling pretty down and couldn’t see a way out. We were at a bible study group and this passage came up! My circumstances didn’t change, just the way I looked at them changed. An opportunity came up for a six-month contract at a company that would mean I would have to spend time away from home but doing something I enjoyed. At the same time another permanent job came up but it meant going back to a type of work I had not enjoyed. I had confidence that although the job was short term, in the long term God would provide and so I went for it and the Lord did provide me with another permanent job at the end of the contract. My Mother died a few years ago, a lovely, strong woman who suffered from clinical depression most of her adult life. For a time I was concerned that I could suffer in a similar way and certainly I went through a period of depression in my teen years when I did have suicidal thoughts. Over the years I have recognised the signs that could take me down into depression. However I hold firm to the promise that ‘I am a new creation’ no longer held by what went before! (Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!) I know God can take us beyond our circumstances into the new! When Rowena and I were considering getting married my Mother was going through one of her bad periods. After a particularly bad visit with my Mother I said to Row whether she should reconsider her decision to marry me in the light of what she was seeing. Fortunately she didn’t and now with over 25 years of marriage I am very glad she didn’t! |
I was brought up in a Christian family and for me it was the natural thing to follow my families’ beliefs.