Understanding Surpassed

Walden Pond, MA picture by Christine Bosch 

It had rained that day.  The path had transformed into sticky grit that lodged itself into every sneaker crevice and between my bare toes. Perfectly round beads of wet hung from every pine needle, and every now and then one of these drops would loosen its hold on the deep green spike and fall with a light ping into a wreath of lake ripples.

And that would be all.

On the day I trekked that muddy path around Walden Pond, "still" is the only word I could employ to adequately describe the place.  Breathtaking, pure, and beautiful would be true as well, but secluded in a prickly nest of green pines with a glass water middle like a mirror to the sky, "still" describes it best.

But that is not the still this post is about.

"Rejoice in the Lord always."
"Again, I say rejoice."

Rejoice is a scary imperative -- an elevating experience but rarely a sensation that can be flipped on by mandate.  Occasionally there will come times in your life, and I sincerely hope you have experienced some already, where your heart will be stirred to new heights of delight.  It can come in one whirlwind moment. It can come on the mountaintop.  Or it could come in the quiet ripples of beauty with a step into the mirror-lake.
Yet there are  far more frequent times, I'm sad to say, when rejoicing is the furthest possible thing from our darkness. When a piece of our heart is resting under six feet of freshly turned dirt.  When that heart is broken again and again until it becomes lost.  When the world is bright but a heavy shroud around us keeps any light from reaching through.  These are the seasons we find ourselves in constant conflict with the other meaning of still.

It is not until I reach this joyless point that I really appreciate the story of Job.  Watching a man lose everything and fall to his knees in the rubble, we see his filthy, disease-ridden face lifted to Heaven -- lifted to the God we credit with miracles but question in suffering -- and hear him utter one of the most life-shattering statements of faith ever made:

"The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord."

Have you ever been in a desert?  I haven't, but I have watched "Hidalgo" like forty times so I think that's probably close enough.  I keep thinking of Walden.  Of how green it was,  how deep, living, earth-rooted, eye-shocking green.  How the water was cold and how the grey pebble beaches were so smooth.  Then I'm forced off my damp tree stump into that grating, fire pit of sand and desert sun.
And I'm suddenly very thirsty.

And suddenly I'm in conflict again with the idea of still.

You see Job isn't just a sad guy with an inspirational story.  He is an uncomfortable mandate given to us in our own problems.  You might be in sweet, June, rain-filled Massachusetts, or you could be dying alone in the middle of the Sahara.  God gives good things, and He can take them away again, but still He is good.

Blessed Be Your Name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

See God, I really like that place.  It's so easy to find joy in that place.  Why can't I just stay in Walden?

Blessed Be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed Be Your name 

But God why?  I thought You were so good!  I thought You loved me!  I thought You were gonna take care of me!  Now I'm parched and weary and hurting and alone in the desert, and now You're telling me I'm still supposed to rejoice?

I'm still supposed to bless You?

I'm still supposed to proclaim to everyone around me that You are good.

yes.

"Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute! Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life."
(Pilippians 4:4-7 the Message) 

And this is precisely what I've found.  I don't know why I'm lost in the Sahara.  I don't know how to get out or where I'm going next, but I know that I am loved.  I know who loves me, and little by little I'm finding out how much.
And here in the heat and the sand, beyond any explanation, I'm finding peace like a sweet oasis.
And surpassing any understanding of mine, I find myself able to more fully rejoice.

Red

Rain pounded against the rapidly fogging windshield.  The constant swish-squeak of wet wiper blades pounded in time to my anxious heart as I stared out blindly into the eight o'clock downpour.  Gripping for dear life to the wheel and searching desperately for the lane-lines, I finally had to admit the truth.  I couldn't see a thing.

"Whoa...."

"What?"

"That's cool..."

"What?"

"Whoa..."

"What?!"

"There's a rainbow in your light bulb."

She turned around and stared. "Alright, what you smokin'?"

I am probably around ten years old, tall and of those awkward proportions possessed by many fifth graders throughout history. I am sprawled on my back across my parents' bed, my mom has probably been talking to me from across the room, and I am completely distracted by the ceiling light hanging directly over me.  

"I'm serious," I say, "I can see all the colors."

Six years later and after countless strange looks from optometrists across the St. Louis area, "what I was smokin'" was officially pronounced "over dilation."  Explained simply: my pupils are too big.  

Doesn't seem like a big deal, I know.  And growing up, I didn't think anything was weird at all.  In science class they told us how white light was actually seven colors, and that all made perfect sense.  They just never told me that I wasn't supposed to see them.  But that day as I sat in the little white office, the spectrum halos around white light bulbs, the long, streaky beams coming from every street light, and the way every Christmas light shone in the cold dark like fifty-pointed, cartoon stars now had a name.  And at the time, that's all I ever thought of it. 

A long, sharp blast from the car somewhere behind me echos between the falling rain drops.  I swerve but correct too far and run halfway up the curb.  "Oh God, oh God, OH @#!&%! oh God, oh God ohGodohGodohgodohgod..." My lips run in an incessant babble of two-word prayers interspersed by vulgarities. "Oh God, help me!"

That's all I ever though of it, that is, until I started driving.  

At first it was horrible. Daytime I could handle because things were bright enough to keep the road visible even when I had to pass oncoming headlights, but my night became a world of stark contrast -- blinding lights and pitch-black darks and little in between   With practice and experience, I learned to cope, to look at the shoulder when cars passed me, and to memorize the size of my lane. But the one thing I could never, ever learn to cope with was night-driving in the rain.  

Every wet droplet around me shines like a searchlight in my face.  Wet rubber skids on wet asphalt and it takes sheer iron determination to keep myself from worsening this problem infinitely with wet eyes.  My world is a swirling glare of yellow streetlights, car horns, and pounding rain.  And I know it, I'm not gonna make it home.

Oh God, I'm not gonna make it.

I'm not gonna make it.

Yes I will.

My faulty eyes focus once more on the only steady thing in my terrifying storm as the glowing red taillights of my brother's car flash a little brighter as he slows for me to catch up.  And I calm myself again. 

I'm okay.

I'm okay.

I can still see his taillights. 

I can follow them home.

If you can't see the point I'm making yet, scroll back up to the beginning and read this again.  

Have you ever been in a storm? Life itself is a storm sometimes. Life is a storm a lot of times. And life for me right now, is definitely a storm.  

And I cry and I scream and I pray and I swear, but through it all I am as blind as my last night drive in the dark.  Nothing is sure. Nothing is constant. The lanes curve or narrow suddenly. I'm lost and I can't even see where I am.  I can trust nothing, nothing in this storm.

Oh God, I'm not gonna make it!

Nothing except the taillights.

Nothing except the red.

Nothing but the red.

Oh God, nothing but the red. 

But the red is enough.

And it will lead me home.