Skip to main content

showers and theology classes

There are a number of things in process in my life right now. Some relationships, some church stuff, some assignments, some minor home improvements, vacation plans, you know the kind of stuff I am talking about. When it clumps up like this, it leaves me feeling unsettled sometimes, kind of empty. When too much is in flux and up in the air, it chips away at one's solidity, one's sense of security and safeness.

So this morning in the shower, I told God, "I feel empty."
And I heard an answer, "Empty? Like a tomb-on-resurrection-day empty?"
God is very funny some days.

Yesterday morning I was sitting in my Introduction to Theology class, and in the middle of a surprisingly interesting lecture on church history, I had a flash of insight.

Change is all about death and resurrection. Change is about being able to die over and over and over again. It is letting go of those things we already know and are familiar with and recognise, about saying good-bye to life as we know it. But more importantly, it is about hope. It is about being able to see that there is a way of living beyond this. There is life after death - it will be different - but it will be life. Jesus was different after the resurrection. His closest friends did not recognise him at first. They had really thought that he was the ONE to save them from bad things in their situation, but it all went so horribly wrong when he died. Death is like that - it looks like things have gone horribly wrong. But it only looks that way. God is never put off by death; he just uses it as raw material for resurrection.

Those times when I feel empty, like things are not working out, I am standing in the tomb. I am looking in the wrong place for life. I am looking for the remains of something old instead of a brand new body. I get stuck at the death part and don't move into resurrection. I know what the dying thing looked like and I have become attached to it, but the resurrected thing - I'm not so sure. It is different, strange, unfamiliar, and unsettling. I have a hard time seeing life beyond this unsettling place, but if I am to live, I must.

Welcome to the death and resurrection cycle. It will happen often, if I let it.

This is Tea investigating the orange juice this morning. She is very much alive. Not the same cat as before her illness, but definitely alive.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go

soul refrigerator

I went grocery shopping yesterday and came home with three bags of food. After I unpacked them all, this is what my fridge looked like: really empty. How does that happen? How can I feel so full and ready for any food emergency one moment, and after one quick glance, realise that I have nothing, really? Today is one of those days in my soul as well. I woke up with gratitude and fullness in my heart, ready to take on this day and all the wonderful opportunities that it presented. Then I caught a brief glance of some emptiness in my life and bam - my buoyancy was compromised. For the past few hours I have been treading water, trying to keep my head in a positive space, bobbing in and out of disappointment, and catching myself whining with pathetic indignity at the cement blocks of other people's stupidity that are tangled around my ankles. When I am staring at the empty refrigerator of my soul, these are my thoughts. Where do I go from here? Perhaps I should slam that refrigerator

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim