Something I've seen this week: a thirteen year old who can't read, and smiles and blushes and shrinks into herself all at once when she realizes I've discovered this fact. That never gets easier to see. On that particular evening, it was overwhelming.
Something I've thought about (often) this week: the really wretched things going on in my neighborhood. It is a taxing thing to live fearfully...
What to do when your life is caught up in the "long defeat" of cultural decay, poverty, violence... and it all seems ridiculous?
(The tempting option is to buy a tree house in a remote location where it is always summer.... then live out the rest of my days there, along with my sheepdog, Rhyme. I would learn how to quilt, and paint, and make pasta from scratch.)
Really, it goes back to Abraham. I recently heard a godly man reflecting on how awkward it would have been to be a friend of Abraham... he was camping out in this desert with his flocks and wife, because God told him this land would be his... someday. For now, he was camping out. And he would have descendants that were as numerous as the stars... but he had a wife who was childless.. and old. As an honest friend, what would you say to that? And how did Abraham cope, with a life that just didn't seem... obvious?
The point is, Abraham wasn't hoping in land or descendents as an end in themselves. His hope was in a coming savior. He was able to keep going because everything was about a far off city--restored, new, bought--and the Savior who would be the radiant center of it all.
Even then, all eyes were on Christ. He was such a prize to fixate on, that the desert was a mere interlude.... as is the city... and the poor ... and the decrepent... and the terrifying...
Sitting across from that sweet young lady with little to look forward to as far as earthly futures go, what was true for Abraham was true for the two of us. Hope for her is also the only hope for me. Our situations are identical.
And when awful things happen... here or there, now or then... I will pray for protection, but rest in confidence of sustained, maintained, protected belief. The place of rest and the reason for continuing is always "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand..." (Jn. 10:29-30)
Meantime, we camp out and sojourn... with the most effective, salty-saltiness, bright-lightness and joyful expectations that we can set our minds and hearts and hands to... the most free and alive of peoples...
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Andrew Peterson also sang these two songs about Abraham's faith...
ReplyDeletethis one really reminds me more of your post... that just as you said we're in the same wondering and waiting place as Abraham... remembering that and really knowing it needs to happen more often in my life...
"Far Country"
Father Abraham
Do you remember when
You were called to a land
And didn’t know the way
‘Cause we are wandering
In a foreign land
We are children of the
Promise of the faith
And I long to find it
Can you feel it, too?
That the sun that’s shining
Is a shadow of the truth
This is a far country, a far country
Not my home
In the dark of the night
I can feel the shadows all around me
Cold shadows in the corners of my heart
But the heart of the fight
Is not in the flesh but in the spirit
And the spirit’s got me shaking in the dark
And I long to go there
I can feel the truth
I can hear the promise
Of the angels of the moon
This is a far country, a far country
Not my home
I can see in the strip malls and the phone calls
The flaming swords of Eden
In the fast cash and the news flash
And the horn blast of war
In the sin-fraught cities of the dying and the dead
Like steel-wrought graveyards where the wicked never rest
To the high and lonely mountain in the groaning wilderness
We ache for what is lost
As we wait for the holy God
Of Father Abraham
I was made to go there
Out of this far country
To my home, to my home
"Canaan Bound"
Sarah, take me by my arm
Tomorrow we are Canaan bound
Where westward sails the golden sun
And Hebron's hills are amber crowned
So bid your troubled heart be still
The grass, they say, is soft and green
The trees are tall and honey-filled
So, Sarah, come and walk with me
Like the stars across the heavens flung
Like water in the desert sprung
Like the grains of sand, our many sons
Oh, Sarah, fair and barren one
Come to Canaan, come
I trembled at the voice of God
A voice of love and thunder deep
With love He means to save us all
And Love has chosen you and me
Long after we are dead and gone
A thousand years our tale be sung
How faith compelled and bore us on
How barren Sarah bore a son
So come to Canaan, come
Where westward sails the golden sun
And Hebron's hills are amber crowned
Oh, Sarah, take me by my arm
Tomorrow we are Canaan Bound