Five days into the year, I feel like I may have taken on an
even more difficult task. It's one thing to talk hope and redemption in the
waning days of a holiday season, but the cold light of January is a sobering
view. Add to that wildfires in Australia and rumors and rumbles of war, and I
find myself sitting here on a chilly Twelfth Night morning wondering if such a
project seems Pollyanna.
The world is a place of brokenness. And sometimes that
brokenness appears even more pronounced, particularly when the fears and
anxieties of what might be play upon our hearts and minds. What does this
wildfire summer in Australia bode for the coming seasons here in the north? How
far and how fast do the current tensions with Iran escalate?
Is it foolish to go looking for hope and beauty in such a
climate?
I've been reading this week (guided by Sara Arthur's
wonderful Light After Light) a
passage from Ecclesiastes. If it's been a while for you, this is one of those
dissenting opinions in the canon of Scripture. Vanity of vanities, as the old
KJV reads. Breath, say the newer translations, and chasing after the breeze.
The Teacher, it seems, might agree that this task is foolish.
But, perhaps not. The Teacher seems to be reminding me that
it's always been like this. There have been greedy bosses and folks just out
for themselves. There have been oppressed who are not rescued and oppressors
who go unpunished.
Yet, that doesn't mean we don't look for truth, love, and
beauty. In fact, we should all the more; because, the brokenness is the way of
the world. Notice, and this is one of the things I love about this book,
there's no sense at all of denying what is happening. The Teacher is not a
person with their head buried in the sand. The world is presented as it is, but
it is accepted. The Teacher acknowledges that there will be sorrows, but he
does so to point us away from despair. Because, I am finding, it is only in
taking and acknowledging the broken places all around us that we can see where
there is also mending.
This does not mean we leave the world as we found it. Seeing
the cuts and breaks in Creation should always drive us to help heal and mend.
But, if we cannot see some of the healing already occurring, how can we hold
onto enough hope to do our part?
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