Cure For A Heavy Heart

Out my window a squirrel reclines like John on Jesus’ breast.  A summer night in Joshua Tree I watched meteor after meteor streak across the sky in a Perseid shower.  There are small delights in nature as well as great grandeur and beauty. On the flip side she can be a horror, a “howling wilderness.” As I write this hurricane Melissa has savaged Jamaica and is bearing down on Cuba and the Caribbean. It is in this tension between its enormity, power and beauty that man continues to find perspective and peace.

“There is but one spot on El Capitan’s upper margin where one can lie down and look into the abyss 3,300 feet beneath him. If a man is a little touched with self-conceit, let him seek this position. Then in his humility and thankfulness would he exclaim with good old Job, “What is man that thou shouldst magnify him.” So writes James Mason Hutchings, the father of Yosemite. I had a similar experience hiking solo down the Narrows in Zion national park. As I stood in the river with towers of red rock rising on either side, I felt immense peace and an assurance that God was in control.

Spurgeon, the great preacher struggled with deep depression. He wrote, “He who forgets the humming of the bees among the heather, the cooing of the wood-pigeons in the forest, the song of birds in the woods…needs not wonder if his heart forgets to sing and his soul grows heavy.” I have sensed God in wind whipping down a canyon and grass growing beside a pond.

Cycling up the west coast years ago a friend and I got stuck in a storm. Hail pelted our helmets as we climbed hills overlooking the ocean. In that beauty with nature fiercely hurling herself at us, I felt very much alive. When soul and heart grow heavy there is no cure like hurling ourselves from our creature comforts into an encounter with creation.

Hidden Riches In Hard Things

 “Officer Thames took me up the driveway, he started kicking me in the back, he kicked me in the kidney and slapped me back of my head and I don’t know if he was hitting me with his hand or hitting me with something…” One of the students testified later that they had a ‘leather blackjack thing’ and that four or five patrol officers would walk by every two or three minutes and kick or hit Reverend Perkins with one of their blackjacks or their feet.

Dr. John Perkins would write later that while in the hospital, “…I began to see with horror how hate could destroy me…Anyone can hate. This whole business of hating and hating back. It’s what keeps the vicious circle of racism going. Jesus’ enemies hated. But Jesus forgave. I couldn’t get away from that.”

We are called to do hard things (apologies to my college professor that insisted, ‘tables are hard, problems are difficult’). My Instagram feed is full of climbers climbing mountain peaks, cyclists speeding and bull riders bracing to reach 8 seconds. The apostle Paul says they do it for a medal that tarnishes. We pursue one that’s eternally gold. But there are overlaps.

Turning the other cheek or climbing K2 forces you into desperate dependence. Living on the edge is never boring. You will experience emotions and perspectives beyond the average Joe. You will have to face yourself. You will face crisis. Labelled an outsider for choosing to swim upstream. For the “tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder.”

It is in doing the hard things that Christ flourishes in us. Crucifixion isn’t grandiose. Small acts take courage. Reaching across the bed to your spouse after a fight. Confessing your addiction to another human. Inviting the neighbor over for dinner. Speaking out against that thing no one else is speaking out against. Leaving a note on the car that you scratched. Saying “I love you.”

“They do it for a perishable prize…” The focus is on the prize, not negative consequences. A tale is told by S.D Gordon wherein a man sets out to climb a mountain carrying all his household comforts. As he ascends, he discards them all piece by piece finally arriving at the peak. “And so it is with the Christian life. Many find that when they cannot reach the top with the things they hold in their hands, they let the top go, and they pitch their tent in the plain; and the plain is so very full of tents.”

“There are churchgoers who have little capacity to resist, because they have been taught that the good life is free from suffering. If they have been taught the faith at all, it has been a Christianity without tears.”

The Ear of the King

 

For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are of sound mind, it is for you. 2 Cor 5:13

She dances on the corner, boom box in her grip,

Grape-Crush carton she wears as a cap,

Folks think we’re like the former, when prayer is on our lips,

As bent-kneed we stand in the gap.

Hard not to feel crazed like that,

To believe that prayer has clout,

Pleading for the church in Nigeria,

Or healing for grandma’s gout.

Don’t try calling Elon or Billy Gates,

They don’t give a damn,

Instead try Him who purchased you,

Who sits at God’s right hand.

You get that call, the tests come back,

It’s cancer rattling your bones,

There is one who calls you friend,

Yet sits on Heaven’s throne.

The failure you face-it’s so bad,

You’d rather amputate a bone,

If a child asks her father for bread,

Why would he give her a stone?

We wonder if He’ll answer, still we persevere,

A beggar’s cardboard sign on a string,

It’s a post-modernist age, “You do you, maybe He’ll hear,”

But we have the ears of the King.