Once upon a time, I had an interview at Oxford. That was a long time ago, when I was applying to study medicine. From that time, despite the fact that the University and I didn't suit each other, I have loved the city of Oxford. It's fantastic!
If you want to see an English city with character and culture, you really can't do better. I love the cream-grey limestone that adorns the city walls and the Radcliffe Camera (below).
During my brief trip to Oxford I went into the Bod Library and looked at an exhibition about medical advances that have been made in Oxford. It was really amazing to see the contribution of one university and imagine the combined contributions of universities and students across the country in changing the world.
A lot of these advances stemmed from brilliant ideas. Not just ideas about what to do practically but ideas that were philosophical or scientific and the mere thought motivated and informed the way that knowledge was pursued. Look at this gem (the translation of the title of this post):
"Nothing can be sufficiently known without experiment"
This idea was essential to scientific and medical advancement. It informed the structure of the evidence-based medicine we still practice today. Perhaps Roger Bacon wasn't the first person who had this thought, but the fact that he did is still remembered and quoted.
Though this is a rule for science, I started to think about how it applies to life and faith. Often when we talk about faith we don't think it can be experiential and maybe we're right in the fact that it doesn't seem to be a formula that produces something measurable by the senses we easily appreciate in our temporal world. Faith itself is not a raging wind or a colour or anything else we can easily perceive as being factual.
However, let's assume that we can apply the rule to it - that we can know these things by experimenting on them and finding out the consequences. After all, we live in an empirical world in which theory and logic are often not sound enough for us. We need to prove things.
I'm a great fan of logic but I have to say that sometimes, for me, logic doesn't explain this world. There are so many things that happen around me every day - feelings I have, things that I do because I felt they were right and they turn out to be so. Call it intuition - but I'm not that smart!
Evidence builds up for me in everything. Let me share a silly and trivial experience from my week. While I know this was silly, I'll tell you about it because of how it made me feel.
I was going to do our weekly shop and had written out my list. I had some cash in my purse but thought I was really pushing it as to whether it would be enough for the things we needed. I have to admit I felt a bit down going around the shop and looking at the things piling up in the trolley. I thought I would have to put it all on my card, thereby not sticking to my budget. Finances are something we're working on at the moment as a couple and it was important to me to get this right.
Anyway, I got to the till and went through the self-checkout to save myself the embarrassment of not having enough cash. I put everything through, packing it into bags and hardly daring to look. When I did glance up at the end it was £5.00 over what I had in my purse. I pressed the total button and it came down to just £1.59 over the amount of notes I had. I checked my coin compartment and just didn't think it looked like enough but I took a deep breath and started feeding in my coins. As I fed the last penny into the machine, I looked up and it read £0.00 to pay. I took my receipt, gathered my things and seriously wanted to cry as I walked out of the shop. Because... Heavenly Father loves me. Because, in that moment I felt like someone was watching out for me and desperately trying to let me know that He was aware of my needs - even if that need was just to feel loved in that moment.
I told you it was a trivial thing but I'm grateful for those little moments.
It's always nice to receive a big bunch of flowers or a weekend away or anything from someone who loves you - but to me real love means consistently being shown love in action. That's the way Heavenly Father loves us. He doesn't send us wads of cash so our purse is full to overflowing - He just makes sure we have that last penny every time.
Want an experiment? Get down on your knees (somewhere private so you can feel daft on your own if this isn't something you do routinely) and just simply ask Heavenly Father in whatever way you feel comfortable with how He feels about you, or even if He is there. Just try it. :)
If you're not in the mood for experiments why not listen to this, just to balance it up between Oxford and Cambridge:
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