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Blessing in Hard Times |
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I write this column, the day is overcast, yet there is a glow of warmth
through the grayness. This weather reflects the mood of my heart.
My soul is overcast with weariness from the stresses of life. To
care for my body and soul I am resting and reading a good novel, These
High Green Hills, by Jan Karon. Today the author contributed
the scripture from Romans 8--"We know that God intermingles all
things for good for those who love God ...." Now there have been days I've reflected on that verse from Romans and been angry because the events in my life were beyond human bearing. I could see no possibilities for God to intermingle these horrific events for my good. Today, however, the verse brought a glowing warmth to my inner being, like the glowing warmth outside on this overcast day. Since I'm something of a nut when it comes to scripture, I pulled out all my study aids and began to try to understand what "good" meant to St. Paul who wrote Romans 8:28. First, I looked at all the New Testament scriptures that contained the word good (agathos). The warm glow I was experiencing
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grew
as I read such lines as, "A good person out of the good treasure of
the heart does good things." (Matt. 12:35) And, "Mary
has chosen the good part.", which was to sit at Christ's feet and
be fed in her soul by him. (Luke 10:42) This word, agathos,
appears in the New Testament 107 times! By the time I finished
reading only 20 passages, my hope for the future was re-ignited.
The clinging grave cloth of weariness in grief was exchanged for peace
and a hope for new life to emerge. We now live in a new and serious age. We have questions about the meaning of life, of death, of things beyond our immediate knowing. Rainer Maria Rilke, poet and author of the early 20th century, felt that World War I brought "a call to intenser living and as an opportunity to learn through suffering." He found it a great and terrible challenge to maintain his double vision--of the "vulgarisation of sacrifice and suffering (from wartime)" and "his faith in the ultimate rightness of things." He left the following as good words for us found in Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties, translated by John J. L. Mood, page 25. |
"...be
patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the
questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written
in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers which cannot
be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the
point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some
distant day into the answer. Resolve to be always beginning--to be
a beginner!" In this season of Advent, let us pray for a warming of our weariness as we wait expectantly for the Light that is coming into our world. Let us be the warmth to others' weariness, encouraging them with St. Paul's words from Romans and Rilke's poetic reflections. And let us ask God for a new courage to live our lives with more consciousness that we were created in Love for Love and the greatest gift we can give this God of Love is our very selves open to discovering the reason we were created for such a time as this. Joyful, Joyful we adore Thee! |
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