Psalm 6
H,
It is difficult to feel like anything more
than a pilgrim on the earth if you live out your faith. There is no place for
you in the rat race if you follow the lamb and the lion. It would feel better
if you felt like a lion most of the time. In a real sense you mostly feel like
a lamb being led to the slaughter. You may feel like you are rescued at the
last moment time after time but there are many times you wonder why you are in
so much trouble in the first place. To balance this out there are mountaintop
moments of absolute beauty and clear moments at the top where your life makes
sense. Yet, you frequently come back down to the flatland where most of human
life is lived. In the in-between you try and get back up there. You judge your
own life not by the low times you spend navigating the desert, but by how many
times you can press through to something ‘worthwhile’. It is often that we look
for the overt sign of progress. It is often that we seek the signs of worth in
the eyes of others. It is often that when we are alone and thinking or when
some tragedy hits or when we hit the wall of self, we are forced to face the
reality of a world that offers nothing transcendental or nothing even real.
When I read the psalms that is what I get the
most. The frustration of the human heart as it is stepped on by others. It is a
single eye view and one has to know the other side to know how true these
claims are but do we not always feel a little bit more justified than the other
side? I know that there are conduits of evil as they are conduits of grace but I
am not sure that in ordinary life we are always fighting evil. Life is not a
comic book and truth be told we are not the heroes of this story. Many times it
is simply our way against another way. It is a rat race and we are unhappy
because we are losing, falling, stagnant or lost in it. We offer up prayers to
be saved from the strength of others without giving a thought to those under
the banal oppression of our own strength. We want to win and be seen to win and
in this reaching out we forget that winning is not the point.
Now, I am talking of those of us who claim to
love and follow God. There is no other path open for those who do not. They are
doing what they know best and they can really do no better. The light has not
hit them dead in the eyes yet. We are the ones for which this will make sense because
the symbols of our faith are a cross, nails, a whipped up back, blood and water
from the sides, a desperate but willing plea in a garden of darkness, a long
sigh and then death. Resurrection, yes but only after a long battle with sin
and death. We are told to “die daily” and to be “perfect losers”. It is not a
pretty sight and if we ask what if we are killed in all this gospel living
Christ tells us: “do not be afraid of who can kill the body but of He who can
end the soul.” The end of things is how
life starts for us.
If we are disillusioned, if we have no joy, if
we suffer under the weight of indecision or decay, if we can see no more light
and are struggling to catch up with the divine, then well, we are taking our
eyes of Jesus and we are sinking into the world. The good part is that we are
able to cry out His name before we drown. The best part is that we are learning
slowly to always keep our eyes on Him.
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