Summer-time! And the livin’ is EASY….
…Nope! After a harried final month to this school year and work year, my planner told me I had a week of fun, de-stressing activities and leisure time – but it was wrong, as planners often are. That week, and the one preceding, and the one following, were filled with family ailments and I, myself, spent several days in bed. Yes, I spent time resting, but not in a way that truly fulfilled Josef Pieper’s long-winded definition of leisure.
So much of life is full of these ups and downs, these quick shifts in fortune or weather. It mimics, perhaps, the movement of the sun or the motion of the waves, pulling and pushing with the tide. As I listened recently to a meditation on Jesus sleeping in the boat on the sea of Galilee, while his disciples felt their terror rising with the height of the waves, a single theme stood out starkly.
This is just life.
A smile of self-realization and down-to-earth truth hides behind those words, which could seem cold and heartless without the right inflection. They should be expressed with laughter and candor. The disciples were dumbfounded that their teacher was asleep, but why? They were fishermen; they knew this sea; they knew there were calm times and stormy times; and if they truly knew that their teacher was the Son of God, there was no need for panic. Perhaps when Jesus opened his eyes and beheld their stricken expressions, he too, chuckled.
Sure, he controlled the winds and the waves, but those men had weathered far more storms in tiny fishing vessels than he had working as a carpenter in Nazareth.
I wonder if stormy weather sometimes catches us by surprise because we are earnestly hoping we’ve past it all. We endure terrible trials in life. We lose beloved ones, face complicated decisions and failures, endure physical torment, live despite financial strain and poverty, and see the world around us change at times with the rise of factions and revolution. I can’t imagine the suffering of friends and acquaintances I know who have already lost spouses or children, and sometimes I feel completely cast down by the multitude of little daily headaches and mental struggles.
It is a wonder we endure at all.
But then, this is life. We live as fallen beings, in a fallen world. Life always has been full of sufferings and miracles. Pain awaits. Joy lies just ahead. Should we expect anything different? Should these events really surprise us? I think, perhaps, there is a danger in idealizing the future. We envision what we want to happen, and the result is a romanticized image. If this is true, we need to grab onto some realism to better face and experience each moment – not the realism that becomes obsessed with the darkness of sin and suffering, but the kind that looks at both good and bad head-on and says,
“Yes, this is a world impacted by the consequences of sin and evil, and through it all my God still sends me experiences of love and happiness.”
On the flip side, sometimes it is too easy to fear the future. Visions of the end-times, of looming crosses, of all imaginable tragedies can paralyze us. Then, it would aid us to recognize that it is harder to turn to God for consolation in anxiety than in suffering. When I am anxious, what propels those feelings of anxiety? Really, isn’t it my desire to control or to amend wrongs, to wrest success from life or to staunch pain’s sting?
In this case, I am anxious because I want to act as a god – and it is hard to fall at the feet of another God in such a state.
Actually, when I am sad it is so much simpler to turn to Him for comfort, or even for just the reassurance that he wept at the death of a friend, he mourned the sins and destruction of his city, and he suffered incredible physical agonies.
I think it is easier to be at rest in sorrow than it is in anxiety.
So, what should I resolve after such reflections? How do I attempt another foray into summer? I remember the running footsteps of the Narnians and children at the end of The Last Battle as, befuddled and excited, they hurried across the countryside with the eagles crying “Further up and farther in!” This is my life, my story-line, and the setting into which I’ve awoken today. To accept is to live and – with joys and pains of this moment and any future chapters – I’m going further in.
