I have this, for now
Hi friends,
Some people rise early in the morning, make tea, pull out a Bible or journal, and sit quietly in an easy chair to pray. Or so I hear. Me? I tend to go for a long walk in the edges of my too-much life and that’s where me and God get down to business: where I rage and cry, argue and rest, yearn and worship. It is perhaps not as inspiring or aspirational as paintings of prayer from old masters or the promises of a devotional book; this just looks like a red-faced middle-aged mother in her beat-up runners and a ball cap on the city path, whom many people have to pass (“on your left”), but it’s been my main sanctuary for past three or four years in particular.
This past weekend, Jesus and I were handling some difficult business on my walk. And at one point, I told him something like, “It feels like we’re in a boat and I brought along everything precious to me for the journey including all those old opinions or priorities or certainties, but you keep tossing things overboard with a grin. What’s left? what’s left but us, here in the middle of everything, together?”
I swear sometimes I can hear God laughing.
As we walked together, we began to explore that. So what remains? If I don’t care about so many things that used to feel like The Most Important Things, then what?
What are my certainties right now? After the storm, after the shipwrecks?
After the ways that life beats us down a bit? After the diagnosis and the losses, the unanswered prayers and the empty certainties, after the grave side service and the broken heart and the loneliness that still comes?
After the wilderness and the long nights and the once-tidy answers?
After you’ve reached the end of the knowledge and the answers and all you’re left with is the rest of the journey?
I kept asking, What has remained, Jesus? What do I still have? and slowly, slowly this is some of what emerged.1 These might change sometime, maybe by tomorrow. But I guess have this, for now, anyway:
I need to live into what I’m for, not just settle for being against. It is always worthwhile to name what I hope for, and to live within that shelter.
It’s always worthwhile to put your hand to good work. However humble and uncelebrated, underpaid or unpaid, it’s honourable to work.
When I hate everything and everyone and start to think there is something to the doctrine of depravity, it’s usually a signal to log off and do some good homely work for a while.
I can always, always call upon my sister, my mum, my dad, and know that I will be met with compassion, truth, love. This is as great a love story as any other.
By its very nature, light will always disrupt the dark so even the smallest candle, the tiniest flicker - joy, love, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness - matters.
The ordinary joys will turn out to be the truest, longest-lasting ones.
I trust in the God of the midnight hours and the unknown depths because I have known Them there, too, and morning still always comes. Not always with joy, mind you, but morning comes.
“Pine trees are just as real as pig stys”2 - and theologically speaking, I’d rather spend my time there, all things considered.