“When everything matters.”

H,

To the great struggles we have with daily life and daily death we cannot afford to give in to the idea of futility. The idea that nothing will ever change is silly but the idea that choices change nothing is dangerous. It is also a lie. The Christian practice is based on the foundational idea that we can change. In fact, after I have fallen from one of my numerous high horses and succumbed to some ignoble act, the first thing that comes to my mind, and I count this as the counsel of the Holy Spirit, is the idea that I can change. The comfort that I will not be this way forever. Some say that this sort of thinking means that we are taking grace for granted. Well, first I think that there is nothing more important than taking grace for granted; counting on it and expecting it to always be there like oxygen and gravity. We do not weigh our steps over physical laws. It is silly to do so over spiritual law.

The second thing is realism. We are constantly falling down. Covertly or overtly we are always breaking some of the literal law of love and well-being. This is not a consolation it is a fact. The law is put before us as a mirror of our own grotesqueness. It is a measuring line for the depth of our depravity and our foiled attempts to love. It is not futile to love or to make choices to love. It is futile to think that failure to do so is final and then nothing matters after that. Everything will always matter. Our struggles are a sign. Our failures, our successes, our seeming failure and our seeming success. It all counts in the beautiful progression of love through time that will culminate in the restoration of everything.

This is the bullion of our faith. All the evil in us and in the world will be addressed. That is what judgement is. It is the rising up of the great and eternal flag of justice over the temporal fever of our present nightmare. The disciplines of God extended through all of history and put in practice by love and grace.

My heart breaks over death, rape, murder, the slaughter of innocents and the general darkness on our patch of earth and beyond. My heart bleeds when these are in my thoughts as victim and as perpetrator of the most violating acts. I long for the sword of God. I long for the new heart in me and the new heart at the centre of all existence. I long for a world where everything matters again.