The Sun Rising Through The Fog
Sunrise
I’ve been in a number of conversations lately where folks are talking about things coming unglued. Things are out-of-whack. Nothing seems to be working as it used to, or sometimes just stops working altogether. You try replacing something that has worked for a longtime, and you can’t find the same brand. Brands proliferate, even though real innovation, as some scholars are suggesting, is hard to find. I went out online to get a flashdrive the other day, and there must have been fifty options. How do you know what’s best anymore?
You try to get someone to fix the lost signal on your cable TV. By the time it’s done, you’ve had five technicians to your place, each with a shrug of the shoulders as they walk out the door, your TV still not working.
In over fifty years of marriage I think I’ve accompanied Sharon to shop for new shoes for her—maybe once. I went the other day, my second time, and was overwhelmed by the number of choices. Over in the men’s shoes, almost the same thing. How does one distinguish these days?
I know these are not end-of-the-world threats. We’ve got a lot of worse things to worry about. But the accumulation numbs the spirit. When things don’t work, anxiety rises. We feel we’re out of alignment, off balance. We feel we’ve lost control. We have no idea how to get back into alignment. Alignment to what, we have to ask? In an phone conversation with three dear buddies last week, talking about these matters, someone blurted out: “We’ve got to simplify.” I immediately recalled that line from Henry Thoreau: “simplify, simplify, simplify.”
William Butler Yeats gives us an apt, oft-quoted image for what is happening:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre;
The falcon cannot hear the falconer.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
What can we possibly do to find our balance when “mere anarchy” seems loose across our land? How do we push back? Yeats suggests we’ve lost a center. How can we restore such a center? That’s one of the biggest questions of my life at the moment. I think it’s one of the biggest questions for our culture too.
George MacDonald, that wonderful nineteenth-century poet, writer, and pastor, proposes a path toward finding that center:
To be right with God is to be right with the universe; one with the power, the love, the will of the mighty Father, the cherisher of joy, the Lord of laughter, whose are all glories, all hopes, who loves everything, and hates nothing but selfishness, which he will not have in his kingdom.
To be right with God is also to be right with the universe? That’s right, says MacDonald, get realigned with God and you will find access to power and love, joy and laughter. That’s what lies at the very heart of the universe. I am struck by the notion too that God hates nothing but our selfishness. Self-centeredness may be the reason we’re so anxious to appoint ourselves to fix the mess. That causes anxiety. Humility is surely at the heart of getting realigned with God.
I suppose in the past we’ve gotten all tangled up with dos and don’ts, shoulds and oughts, required before we can get right with God. But this passage from MacDonald carries none of that tone.
In this season of Advent, I am reminded of that lovely Charles Wesley hymn, first sung 1744. Here’s where we can find the center that gets us right with God.
Come, thou long expected Jesus,
born to set thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee.
Israel's strength and consolation,
hope of all the earth thou art;
dear desire of every nation,
joy of every longing heart.
That’s what I want to sing in the days ahead: Come my long expected Jesus. Release me from my fears, my anxieties, the burden that I’ve got to fix it all. Let me find rest in thee. I am counting on this new perspective, so filled with joy and hope and laughter. This is the longing of every heart, Wesley says rightly. This is actually the desire of every nation.
I know it’s my desire. Come, Lord Jesus, restore my focus, give me rest, give me balance once again in an out-of-whack world. Let me see more clearly the sun rising through the fog.