First, a short word of thanks for the response to last week’s short story. Replies to these posts go directly to my inbox and I was encouraged reading the reactions from you , dear readers.
My apologies to those of you who felt I left you hanging with an unresolved story. I have to tell you, that story was written in Starbucks while my son had soccer practice, and was finished with him breathing down my neck, hungry and impatient to go home. Not exactly a glamorous writing life:)
My favorite time of day is the early hours. Sunsets can be glorious in their own right, and yet in them lingers a sense of melancholy, a drawing to a close, an end of things. But the sky slowly lightening? The quiet of a world asleep, slowly coming back to life, the solitude of coffee in hand and a day yet unsullied? Early mornings are nothing if they are not hopeful.
I love the early mornings, and yet they are often fraught. This week, I felt the tension of things both good and hard sitting with me in that chair looking out on a sky barely luminous, crawling slowly toward the dawn.
But let’s start with the good.
We had our first basketball tournament in four years take place last weekend and our three oldest played like champions. It was a dream come true for them, and really our whole organization. The COVID cloud is lifting and life is returning to our schools. You can see it in the students and the staff. The whole weekend was a reason to give thanks.
Our son who is a junior and is perhaps the one with the most to lose in our return to the States this summer, came home one afternoon and told me he has been feeling excited as he thinks about the new school and place we’ll be next year. This is an answer to many prayers. There is more to this story, and certainly it is not saying everything about where he’s at or where he’ll be in the days to come, but it is still a moment to be grateful for.
On Thursday, our oldest received an acceptance letter to his dream university. We are stunned at the possibilities he has before him, and at the same time honor how hard he has worked to get to this point. Though now, in a way we never expected, he has a decision to face that almost exactly mirrors our own just a few months ago. Two excellent schools. Two amazing opportunities. How to choose? And yet, again, a choice we can only give thanks for.
So there I was, sitting in my chair with all that goodness, gazing out the window at the charcoal haze of night turning slowly to oyster grey. Buildings and treetops began to take shape, birds were faintly chirping (they too are starting to assemble again and raise their hopeful voices).
This mixture of darkness and light was like a reflection of my thoughts, so many good gifts intermingled with a low level sense of foreboding. There have been emails that cause worry and conversations about things to which there is no easy answer and it pressed down in an unseen kind of weight.
These early morning hours have become a place to sit and hold both light and heavy things before the One who somehow allows them both and is working in the midst of it all.
It is this tension— the heavy things that God is using, is allowing?— that is sometimes hard to understand. I have glimpses of having peace in the midst of this tension. Glimpses, I say. Because those moments come and go. We have been studying through the book of Habakkuk and I find in this prophet a kindred spirit: the testimony of a man who believed in the God of Israel, and yet cried out in his struggle to understand just what God was doing: You say you are just, why are you letting this evil go unchecked? You say we are your people, why are we being destroyed? Where are you, God? How is this your plan?
I like Habakkuk because it’s not an easy book. I like it because God allows includes it as part of the story in telling us who He is, who we are, and how we understand the world. Sometimes the answers He gives us are not as scientific as we would like. They don’t follow our empiricist formulas. Sometimes it is simply: I am God. I love you. I am doing something you cannot even imagine. Trust me. Follow me. I will meet you there.
This is where Habakkuk seems to end up— in a place of surrender and trust, and dare I say hope— even if “kingdom come” is delayed in his lifetime.
I wonder, am I afraid of the difficult things that will come into our lives because of our broken world, our broken selves? I think that like Habakkuk, I can admit that often, I am. But should I stop there, sit in that fear? I don’t believe I should, or that this is what Jesus invites us into.
And yet, even though I know that we are not meant to live in fear, and that Jesus promises peace even in the midst of storms, sometimes I need others to give me a picture of how this looks in the concrete stories of our lives. I think this is what the old fashioned people would call, “testimony.”
I need testimonies. I need the company of pilgrims, people on the way who are fleshing out what it means to follow and obey and believe, in the swirl of a world gone awry.
I found a few this week, and they raised me up and helped me fly a little higher, a little more sure. Perhaps they will lift you as well.
I share this list, knowing that these conversations or stories may not hit you in the way they hit me, and with a list of caveats that I will not enumerate (as in, I don’t endorse everything said or believed here but this is not meant to be a doctrinal statement).
When I heard Sam Allberry say, that in spite of all the challenges we face as a culture, as the church, as humans— there is no other time he would want to be alive in the world— I felt like someone had squeezed my hand and said, “let’s do this.” Subsequently, it sent me back to reading through two of his books this week, which are short, and wonderfully clear thinking and compassionate.
This beautiful essay, written by a father whose son is an addict. I will say that before reading this, I heard a talk given by a completely different man talking to a school community, where he innocently shared about the “blessing” that is his family of adult children all walking with the Lord. And I came away unsettled by his words for all those who may be listening with guilt or shame or sadness at the state of their own family. Then I read this article. The way he weaves in a meditation on Psalm 40, his son’s present struggle, the love of a father, his faith in a God who cares, and the need for others to carry him, had me in tears.
Speaking of U2, this interview with Bono. How our lives and art can be in response to our hope in Jesus, even without a bumper sticker.
Much to ponder in this interview with the brilliant, Yuval Levin. I find it so hopeful when someone thick in the weeds of politics, academia, and religious culture, remains humble, yet clear about our work in the world. We don’t choose the times we live in. We are not called to be the victors. We try to be faithful. We don’t despair.
A quote from Dorothy Day (below) that I read in a small compilation of her writings, “The Reckless Way of Love: Notes on Following Jesus.” Dorothy had a radical conversion from a liberal bohemian lifestyle to Catholicism in the 1920’s (her story is heartbreaking and beautiful) and founded the Catholic Worker houses for the poor in cities across America. Her life was messy and compelling and astoundingly sacrificial, and her writing always moves me.
“Do what comes to hand. Whatsoever thy hand finds to do, do it with all thy might. After all, God is with us. It shows too much conceit to trust to ourselves, to be discouraged at what we ourselves can accomplish. We must depend solely on him. Work as though everything depended on ourselves, and pray as though everything depended on God, as Saint Ignatius says… We are sowing the seed and it is up to him to bring the increase. It is all in his hands, and we must keep ourselves in peace, first of all. That is where peace begins. He is our peace.”
And finally, a personal poem. From those early hours.
The sky, a wintery dark, lightens.
Returning birds call from a distance.
Out of the night, out of the deep
morning comes.
Morning always comes.
I find myself feeling rather pensive, for lack of a better word, as I read each link. Maybe because it’s the first day of Lent and I am once again trying to focus on this season differently, more deeply than I have in the past. Maybe it is just because of the way the words, “bearing the burden of hope” landed on me.
Thanks for sharing.