Monday 30 October 2017

The Falling-Apart will become the Pulled-Together

got home from a work trip on Saturday evening. After more than a fortnight sleeping on a problematic mattress, I was thrilled to be tucked up in my own bed, in my own room, accompanied by my own favourite brand of tea in my own mug.

The following morning I woke to a rather less idyllic reality. It seems that things really do happen in clusters. The kettle, the blender and the dishwasher are all broken. And beyond the kitchen, things are little better. The printer and the laptop both met their untimely demise at around the same time as the car began making a thunderous clonking noise before being admitted to the mechanic’s. 

It’s rather dispiriting, but things really do fall apart. And all at the same time, it seems.

So it got me thinking. There’s something about this falling-apart state of things that speaks of a bigger reality. We are made for a place of astonishing beauty, a place where relationships and situations are all in order, a place of flourishing and abundance on every level. Something within us yearns for this state of wholeness and well-being. And yet, the truth is that life isn’t like that much of the time. 

We exist in a place of tension between the wholeness we are made for and the dislocation we currently experience.

This is why we long for community and we even fleetingly get a taste of it. But we also experience the destructive force miscommunication and offence can exact on relationships. This is why we sense a strength and vitality in our physical bodies that makes us feel invincible. But we also fall down and get hurt, running into the brick wall of our physical limitations and impediments. This is why we pursue that feeling of being just the right person, in just the right job, at just the right time. But we also know the drudgery of clock-watching when we’re not working in our real vocation.

And this is why there are urban spaces that are ugly and soul-draining. And legal systems that are unjust and corrupt. And governments that are drowning in red-tape and back-handers. And schools that are boring and unsafe. And churches that are vision-less and dull. And sports that are drug-riddled and scandal-ridden. And technologies that are removed from their original positive purpose and used destructively by greedy power-mongers.

Things fall apart.

Yet, at the same time the overarching and unseen reality is that, through Jesus, God is reconciling all things to Himself (Colossians 1, 20). And we are invited to keep our eyes fixed on this greater truth: that everything - everything - is being, and will be, pulled together again into God. And that it will be good beyond any good we’ve ever known. And that we were made for that sort of world.

In my heart, I whisper this to the friend whose husband left her for another woman. To the one whose father is dying. To the one who lost his job. To the one who’s estranged from her daughter. To the one in debt and to the one in rehab. 

It was not meant to be like this. And if it was not meant to be like this, then this is not the end. There is more, much more, to come. Hold on!

Though it’s not the end of the world, it’s frustrating to sit among my broken things. Even a little overwhelming, I have to admit. Life is not working smoothly and easily, the way it should. Surrounded by defunct appliances I cannot afford to replace, in my more dramatic moments it feels like a graveyard of my ideals.

So I put a pan of water to boil on the gas ring of the stove and in a small and perhaps a silly way, I let this be my prayer: help us to hold on when things fall apart. May the tension we feel when things are not the way they should be remind us that a better world is coming.

All things will be pulled together again. And a new MacBook would be heavenly too.


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