When All is Sad and Done

                                            When All is Sad and Done


Some days carry more weight than others. Some days carry more guilt. Some days the weight is the guilt. I have carried some guilt as of late. For a freed Christian and pastoral leader I am suppose to be over all the guilt trips. Much progress has been made on that front but it's not complete yet. I feel guilty about that.

I feel sad on some days as of late. I am sad I can't fix my wife's chronic back problems. I feel guilty that I can't, adding to the sadness. I feel sad that the Middle East is on the brink again, but I am having trouble remembering when they weren't. I feel guilty at times for living in such a nice place with nice people and wonder if it wouldn't be "more Christian" to live in a poor place with meaner, tougher people. Maybe I could have a bigger impact for the Kingdom. See, guilt can lead to fantasy before you know it. And to be honest, except for wanting my wife to feel whole again, the other "guilts" are short, fleeting, wispy moments.

But one has lingered longer lately. It has backtracked into my conscience several times over the past few weeks. It usually comes after the guilt of no peace in the Middle East, the showdown with Syria, the serial rapist news in Dallas, the floods of Colorado, the drought, remembrance of 9-11's horrors, the economy, the marriages and families struggling, and the continuing moral and spiritual decay in the hearts of Americans. These are all bad news items any one of which could spark a round of depression followed by a round of Jack Daniels.  Yes, they cause a pause, a pain, a sorrow, and even a little guilt because I can't fix them but the real guilt shows up shortly after thoughts and prayers about these and other signs of brokenness in life show up.

It is, for lack of a better term, the guilt of joy.

Yes, joy. A settled disposition of the heart that senses, knows, believes that the best is yet to come and is in fact guaranteed by Jesus but is yet to come in completion. Joy takes on a real but temporal expression because of its future fulfillment. You see, that joy thing is the reason that ten minutes, half an hour, half a day after the meanness of this world has shaken out my heart again like a dirty rug,  I smile, I laugh, I find sheer joy in a person, a quirk, a miss-step, a misquote, a juxtaposition or an outrageous spotting of grace and life and love.  The smile of two year old grand-daughter sends waves of rapture through the heart. It is fleeting but real. The tales the grandson tells at five make me so alive I can't wait to see what he says at six. The exquisite delight of people laughing, telling a joke, enjoying a meal, sharing an embrace or a cup of coffee is more alive to me than the pain and the horrors abounding. Am I deluding myself? Maybe. I am ignoring the facts? Possibly. Am I whistling past the graveyard? Why not? What do you do as you walk past the graveyard? Or maybe the fact that in the eternal, spiritual terms of the kingdom of God I know I am going PAST the graveyard helps me whistle. There is something beyond the graveyard, beyond the wars, past the pains of life that both breaks in on us as more real than these and at the same time pulls us on to its ultimate reality. I believe that is JOY. The joy of the presence of Christ in the heart, in the church, and in the world.

To C S Lewis, joy was the stab of longing that unexpectedly wells up in us during unguarded moments of contemplation.  It was a desire, never a possession, a longing, often unexpected, and a reminding of what was yet to be. In the Weight of Glory C S Lewis wrote that the yearning he experienced during those moments, convinced him there was another existence beyond this world. "For they are not the thing itself, they are only the scent of a love we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited."

Yes, but that perfumed lover, that artistic musician, that herald of good news has visited us from that other country. And the lover's song and His good news announces Joy. It is the flag of the King flying over the castle that signifies even in bad weather, bad economies, and war that the King is on His throne.  So when all is sad and done, then what remains is joy. It makes me feel guilty some days. It's a guilt I can live with.

Cos