“These new things that feel so old”

“These new things that feel so old”

H,

I have been thinking of how quickly we have grown out of our innocent ways. We used to really weigh things, back in the day. It is was not mere morality; there was something so darn precious about the way we approached life and living. Now, we are less able to see things without the grey. I do not think that older means wiser. More often, it means more careful, jaded or cynical about the real hope of all things. We are more calculating, I guess, is what I am trying to say.

It is like this: when we were young we were always trying to stop ourselves from being impulsive and now we struggle with letting ourselves be a little less predictable. There is a sense of wonder in God that you cannot afford to lose. The things set before us, before everyone really, are so magnificent and metaphysical that we cannot live in stoicism and still have a full life of faith. We cannot focus on these new things that feel so old; the new disappointments that hark back to old failures, the new fears that we match up with old anxieties and the terrible idea that we are making no progress.

The pilgrim’s process is different. There are no external markers that we celebrate in the world today. A billion-dollar ministry is more evidence to our windy eyes than love, gentleness, faith or humility. We want the accolades and not the humiliation. Our faith wants the humiliation that is redemptive. Our faith calls for the falling down that is really standing up. No human eyes can see it.

We are perpetually attracted to pretty things. We are fools to the attractive and the pristine. We do not want that awful mess that only the grace of God can cure. We do not want to admit that we are in that awful mess that only the grace of God can cure.  We want to be independent of everything, even God. The mantra of the moment is self-sufficiency, self-love and self-fulfillment. It is not that there is anything wrong with all that ruckus. It is only that they will not take us where we need to go. After all that has died down, the greatest question of all remains human mortality. The absurdity of the finite life calls us to look deeper than the decades we spend on a mock up earth. There is a calling to something more. There is a mystery that rolls all across the universe. It calls to us in our most silent moments. It tells us to turn and look into the light. When we are done with all the acting and posing and pretending the world has taught us, that light is still above us, edging us home. It does not dim with age. It grows brighter through space and time. It will grow brighter in us if we let it.

"To give of your life and to, finally, give your life”

H,

We had that old joke about forty years in the wilderness before the promised land. The funny thing is that it is not a joke at all. It is the heart of Christian pilgrimage. We are hyped on the idea, frequently, that the lesson from the story of the wilderness is; do not be stubborn, do not be sinful, do not doubt God and eat your manna with gratitude. Those old pilgrims of old did all that evil and look how they ended up. The truth is we are stubborn, we are sinful, we doubt frequently and we spit our manna out. We are not better because we cannot be better. We are not better pilgrims. We are just the present pilgrims.

The eons we have spent in fallen state is not so easily erased. It is the full work of the sacrifice of Christ. It is God’s blood on wood. The human problem has divine implications and, yes, a divine solution. We cannot speed up the process though. We hide in the make up of the faith when this is about nature not looks. It is about desperate honesty and not putting your best foot forward. It is about dancing with two sore feet.

There is a standard, a line, a heft of holiness and truth that is the rule across the universe. We fall way below that. We cannot attain it. It has to be given to us. It was given to us. It does not mean we have to change the way we speak, the way we move or the clothes we wear. It does not mean we represent anything central to the faith when we make it look fun or clean or whole. It is all those things but we are not. The faith is working in us, if we let it, and then working out of us. It is not our nature. This is why we are being reborn. It is not that the holy spirit transforms by rote. The work is much more serious than that. It will take a lifetime. It is complete upon death. And the in-between is more dying.

Death and dying, in this context, are synonyms to life and living. The resurrection speaks to this. We are dying to someone and living to someone else. We are giving up the feckless wonders of the world to believe in the ethereal benefits of the forever spirit. We are making choices up and down the narrow road. Yet all those choices are really just on choice: who will you serve?

Right before us, we have always known, is the direct choice between the light and the dark. If we dwell in the light as He is in the light, then we are transformed. The world may be on fire. We may feel that we are utter failures at living up to it. We may be more fallen than risen but we are in the light. And we are changing.

Amen.