It’s been another, brief but
difficult season in life for me. Since
Ash Wednesday, my engagement and pursuit after what the meaning of
mortification of my body and mind looks and feels like at seventy four, I’m
sure precipitated the difficulty. Not only have I dipped into shadowy doldrums but
find myself at a juncture where I’ve discovered I’ve been before. A condition in my being when my pen stops
moving, and my tangled thoughts seem to only find at their disposure
fair-weathered words and deficient clichés. I been freezing up at writing notes
of condolence, sending a thought of encouragement—sometimes even signing a congratulation
card. Responding to a birthday on Facebook can stop me in my tracks. Looking
for words in the midst of death and grief, or life and its best intensity, I
often come up empty. Anything I might be able to scrape from my mind seems
unbearably inadequate.
Nonetheless, I recognize that there
have been times when during certain times words never came easy for me. I have
never, without difficulty, been able to tell someone in the dregs of chemotherapy that I am
sorry for them? Or told someone struggling with addiction to trust that things
will work out, that goodness or grace, God is with them? It’s always a struggle
for me to offer anything to someone on the brink of death? I’ve never felt that
I can begin to put into words any sort of comfort that must be bigger than the
sorrow—or even the abundance of life—my eyes can see? There are some words that
just require my laboring over them, some truths that are too weighty to be
tossed lightly into the laps of any friend or would be enemy.
On the other hand, I must not always
labor. There has been times when I’ve tossed God’s wisdom as if it were
something I could hold onto in the first place. I imagine, like Jesus among the
Pharisees, God works to undo my well-worded mottos. I don’t understand the
truth of incarnation just because I can quote John 3:16. And I can’t explain
away the reality that life is hard or death is painful because I believe in the
premise of resurrection. Whether my truth-tossing arises out of good intention
or pride, I know Christ to be always far more real than this. God will not
allow ideas to remain as worthless idols—though shining or polished or
well-meaning they are. Christ is more available than cliché, belief, or
proverb. He is the living one my creed will continue to speak of long after I
live no more.
I comfort myself, this morning in the
apostle Paul words when he wrote that nothing can remove the love of
Christ—neither “trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or
danger or sword”—he was referring to struggles that were dangerously real to
him and the people to whom he was writing. I’ve experienced his insistence that
God’s love is more enduring than famine or suffering or injustice. It is
stronger than death, as unyielding as the grave. How can I put this in to words
without trembling? How can I explain the crucifixion without falling to my
knees in shock, in wonder, in speechless gratitude?
Father God, Stumbling over words to describe the hope I profess, I find myself, once again, broken by the mystery of it all and even my misplacing of it. I've been stopped
by my loss of its realness, my overlooking of the immensity of Christ and the
immovability of His love. Christ has died; Christ has risen; Christ is coming
again. In the silence of my tangled thoughts, I'm finding You again behind the creeds calling to me over and above the words. I am eternally grateful! Amen
