Good for the Soul. . .

We've been lazy about posting and have let this blog fall to the wayside of our lives.  But we value what posting here provides us - a chance to process through things we're thinking, a venue for soliciting input from those we love and respect, the reminder that contemplation, meditation and sharing ideas are important.  So we'll try to do better, be more faithful to this little intellectual endeavor.  Try.

Beauty and the Beast

I started this post in my head a couple of weeks ago, intending it to focus on language.  I had a couple of paragraphs and a marvelously appropriate title rolling around in my head for two solid days; I just couldn’t seem to find the time to sit down and type.  Then Thursday morning arrived, and, in faculty devotions at the school where I work, we were asked to pray for a family whose children attended our school for many years.  The mother is dying of cancer.  She’s fought it for a long, long time, but it’s killing her, and it seems as if it won’t be long now.

I sat there in morning devotions, my mind full of those sentences I had composed about beauty and beasts, and this blog post took a different turn, a different tone.  Still, I couldn’t carve out enough time and clarity to write.  My own family’s struggles with health, though minor in comparison, and my commitments at work occupied all of my coherent hours, so the thoughts brewing away inside me never percolated onto the page.  

This morning, checking my email on an unexpected snow day respite, I learned that the middle school son of a former colleague was diagnosed this week with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.  There it was again - cancer, tearing into another family, taking what was healthy, full of life and hope, and turning it inside out with corruption.  So here I am, at my computer, desperate and determined in my quest for a bit of catharsis and purgation.  

Sickness and disease make me sad.  Cancer makes me angry. I hate it with a visceral, personal loathing that twists my stomach if I think about it too long.  I hate it because it took my grandfather and attacks my friends.  I hate it because, since cancer’s first intimate incursion into my heart, I can’t hear the word without thinking of it as a perfect microcosmic metaphor for sin.  Like sin, cancer takes what the Creator made beautifully and declared good and causes it to mutate in uncontrolled corruption.  Like our insufficient human responses to sin, cancer’s treatments are damaging and painful themselves, doing much harm alongside any good they accomplish.  Like sin, once cancer touches our lives, we seem always to be tainted by it - scarred, struggling to overcome, and mindful that cancer, too, prowls this earth like a lion looking for someone to devour.  I hate cancer because, like sin, it is a beast that destroys beauty.   And sometimes I hate cancer because it reminds me that I don’t hate sin enough.  

So, I pray for this mother, interviewing nannies for the children she will leave.  I pray for this young man, racing now into a battle for his health when he should be running down a basketball court.  I pray for my dear coworker, whose husband, after a decade-long fight with cancer, recently left this world for his Home.  I pray.  And I make myself sing the hope of the old hymn, “This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet,” even as my heart echos the words of a dear friend, who know worships before the Risen Lamb, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus, come quickly.”  Only then will Beauty finally overcome the beast.

Perfection

He’s coming for a Pure Bride. As I repeat this idea over and over in my head, it is both chilling and warming. Christus Victor is coming in search of a pure and holy bride, worthy of the eternal marriage between the heart of the Maker and the hearts of his creation.  I could not help but blog about this, just because I am so captivated with the idea. The love that brews and flames within me for this holy union breeds humility...that I, a sinner amongst sinners, will be joined with Love. There will be no death do us part, for He is eternal, and I am eternally His. As a teenage girl, the idea of a fantasy life with a perfect husband surrounds my environment. This idea of perfection on earth is lost to me, however. With the imperfection on earth, what is there to put my hope in?  Mere trinkets of this world? I don’t think so! With the acceptance of imperfection, I gain hope for ultimate perfection that I will delight in with my Father. I choose to put my hope in the unseen, the unmoved Mover, and ergo put my hope and trust in utter beauty and perfection. Am I perfect? Absolutely not. Will I one day be eternally bonded with the utmost perfection? Certainly. So what do I do in the meantime? In the time I spend awake during everyday? I live according to the scriptures, I delight in leisure, and in the beauty of work. I strive to feed my curiosity and hunger with what the Maker provides me to fill it with and nothing more. For how could there be more? Delighting in any other detracts and generates starvation. However, my God the Almighty overflows my cup, provides for me like no other source, shines light in the dark, and desires a pure bride so that when he returns to His earth, he may find His bride, damn the stains that darken her, and all shall be pure, without imperfection.   Blessings, Nora.