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I had a disappointing week. After hard work and recent days filled with unexpected joys and pleasant surprises, this week just didn’t make any sense. I’m tired and my heart feels drained dry. I know I’m supposed to reflect today because everyone’s Facebook status and years of tradition say so. I know three days from now I am to celebrate, and I will. But when holidays stretch on a relentless cycle to be stepped through carefully if one is to bypass commercialism’s chaos, all I want is a moment’s quiet. Not quiet to meditate, or even “pray” but just to BE with Him, to be still, my heart layed bare where He can touch each aching part because that’s when the Life is breathed. Even in this wish the sarcastic voices come, you bleeding heart, cry me a river, why am I always hit so hard when other’s seem to march straight through?
Madeleine L’Engle writes that the artist has “a longing to find the melody in the discord of chaos, the rhyme in the cacophony, the surprised smile in time of stress or strain. It is not that what IS is not enough, for it is; it is that what IS has been disarranged, and is crying out to be put in place . . . The artist cannot manage normalcy. Vision keeps breaking through, and must find means of expression.” and so I hear her voice and lean into it’s familiar warmth as I would a childhood friend. The tears come and I know I’m not alone. We reach out through ages to each other, our souls joined by Him, all the friends, His children waiting for the life He meant.
We meet betrayal a million times more in this life as friends, family, dreams, vocations, our own hearts and minds and bodies slip sideways away from us. And it hurts us each wether we say or not. All the striving, constant striving wears us down. And beyond this daily grind strikes tragedy, no life untouched, each carrying it’s scars or waiting for it’s descent. He is no tyrant, so He let His world be disarranged, but the Great Artist was compelled to put it back in place. He could not live with this degrading normal that we humans dream up. Not through anger or coercion, but through joining hands in brokenness, our Brother came to us. I am not alone in this time and space. My Father came for me. He had no home. Most hated Him. And to those who knew they needed healing, He served until His very life was poured out.
He told religion to stop lying to and hurting His children. In the face of betrayal, blindness, misunderstanding and doubt He pulled His beloved close. On the brink of death He gathered round food and drink and shared nourishment. Many think this makes for a lovely story, but can be nothing more than fairy tale. Yet we run to fairy tale every chance we get as if it will save us, as if it is the reality calling out from deep within our hearts, stories of grand battles, unlikely alliances, heroes in disguise, redemption and happily ever after some day . . . we long for Someone, for Unity, and seeking it we run to those that hurt us and live fractured lives, not even connected to ourselves, our head and heart oblivious of what the other needs, battling eachother like rival siblings. We hear His story, see His beauty and turn the channel. We argue against His love poured out and convince ourselves we are too unworthy or have no need and still He bleeds. We patch things up and ignore the inevibility, death all around us, everything pouring through our hands, we can not keep one shred of life and yet He promises us Life unfailing. So confident, He went to death unafraid. He lived and died sure as history. The truth is told through each generation in song and dance, story, love and art. The truth of purpose, order, meaning and beauty rises all around in nature’s bounty, it blazes across the sky with the colors of the sun. And one man dared to say He was the way to that truth. Jesus.
“God must be very great to have created a world which carries so many arguments against His existence.” – unknown
There are so very many arguments but in this dry and weary, confusing world I do not long to win an argument. I long to know Love and to be known and loved regardless. There is nothing else in this world that I have found, nothing I would rather believe in. This is the only story who reveals to me the Someone my heart is longing for. An artist, a creator who loves and accepts us. The only words that heal the rhythm, the only song that doesn’t lull me into numbness but warms my soul to smile. “The melody in the discord of chaos, the rhyme in the cacophony.” I am thankful that He reaches out to know us. To be with us, not as we have heard or try to construct Him to be, but as He is, Jesus.
