Chocolate eggs appeared in
the shops after Christmas; for many of us Easter is prone to getting a little
dusty on the shelves. Sweep away the cobwebs however, and re-reveal an important
Christian festival: a time of reflection and real celebration. But in today’s
increasingly secular world, what does Christian faith mean to those who have it?
EMILY RETTER of the Sutton Coldfield Observer speaks to one Sutton man who had
his tested in the cruellest way.
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“As you
go to sit in a chair you know it’s going to hold you up – that’s what faith
is all about; it’s trusting,” explains Tony Swannie. “Except with faith in
God, it’s trusting in something you can’t see.” Tony Swannie was delivering
a chair when it happened.
Delivering a chair to his vicar in Aldridge.
It was a sunny day; a ‘normal day.’ And Tony Swannie had an unshakeable
faith. Then he got home, to Little Aston, and the atmosphere was all
wrong. “It was all rosy in the garden,” he describes. “Shiny”.
But it
was eerily calm. A neighbour ran to greet him. He was told his 15-month old
daughter, Rose, has fallen in the swimming pool. She had silently slipped
under the protective covers and lain there for 15 minutes before she was
found.
When Mr
Swannie reached her at Good Hope hospital, he could hardly get to her.
“There seemed to be 100
doctors and nurses in the room,” he remembers.
“There was no room for
me, but I squeezed in to her and started stroking her head.
“I was asking her to
come back.”
Up until that day the chair had
always held Tony Swannie.
As a 15-year old boy he had believed in a Christian God. |
Tony Swannie & Ella |
“I joined Aldridge Youth Fellowship and became a Christian,” he
says. “I wasn’t brought up as a Christian; it was my own choice. “I was doing
normal teenage things, saw the group and thought it looked like fun so I got
involved. “I went for it hook, line and sinker and always believed God had
always done good things for me.” Even the kids at school who
bullied him didn’t put him off.
Rose Swannie |
But when baby Rose spent
six weeks in intensive care, his faith faced what seemed an insurmountable
test.
“I immediately went into
prayer mode,” Mr Swannie remembers. “To ask the Lord to help little Rose.
“I got a number of
Churches praying for her: Aldridge Parish Church and all those connected to
it.
One Sunday I went and
stood at the front of the church and asked people to pray.
“I’m no goody goody, I
have my faults, but I had always believed I had tried to be generous and
good, and that the more good you put in, the more good you got back.
“It was like I was
calling in the good things I had done.”
He added: “To me it was
a simple miracle God could have done, to save Rose.” But as the weeks went
on, the miracle didn’t happen.
The chair began to
crumble.
It seemed faith wasn’t
one end of a bargain to be upheld. Life, whether you believe it be the
product of a greater plan or not, is never that easy.
“I was in the depths of despair,” said Mr Swannie. " It was then that I got
angry with God. |
“I remember
one day going into a field and beginning to bellow and shout at him; I was
shouting at the sky. “I was so angry I wasn’t getting what I wanted.” It was in
the field that he learnt something more about faith. For many of us,
believing in the chair we cannot see is hard enough. That day, Mr Swannie learnt
something that tested him even more. " Believing in God is like believing that
black is white,” he tells me.
“Even if things look black,
like there is no future, you must still believe it is white.
“Trying to convince someone that black is white is hard, but that is what faith
is all about.”
In 2006, where black is
always black and white is always white; where gadgets make life easy and
increasing anti-social behaviour forces suspicion, it’s easy to see why church
congregations are falling.
In a world of science and
technology, where there is an explanation for almost anything – and where the
incomprehensible is often cruel and frightening, why shouldn’t people demand
answers? Why shouldn’t we want to know it all?
“I think people are
frightened of what they can’t see,” said Mr Swannie. “But if you look closely
you can see: in people and in nature.”
He added, “Your mind can
boggle you. “We naturally question everything, there are always doubts. “But if
you want to look too deep you are looking too far. “Faith has to be simple, like
a child having faith in its parents. “you just accept or not accept.”
That day in the field it
looked like there could be.
One week later, Rose died.
Mr Swannie put his head to
her chest and heard her heart fading away. “Half the intensive care unit came to
the funeral,” he remembers.
“We celebrated her life. “It
seemed the whole world had turned out to say goodbye.” The unbelievable is after
all, not always unseen.
“We didn’t get what we
wanted,” he added. “But what I had got left was my faith.
“I still felt we were in
Gods hands, that there must be a plan.
To do everything right and
to get the wrong result was to go against the grain, but I made up my mind to
believe God would deliver us from the situation.”
His faith means that he
believes one day he will know why he lost Rose. And why, just over a year later,
his second daughter, Ella, was born.
He doesn’t pretend to know
all the answers. But, he explains, his faith gives him confidence – that there
is a guiding hand. “Ella seemed to be a little miracle,” he says. “She was the
light at the end of the tunnel.”
Published in the Sutton
Coldfield Observer 14th April 2006