The Spirit of Waste

"The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works." Ps. 145:9

I lay quiet this afternoon and in my mind I wandered through what felt like disconnection with the world. I could see it all but could not find why anything I saw mattered. It was all blah. I was troubled as this seems wrong. Then I saw that there is only emptiness when the Lord is not present. The rooms are dull. Until He joins us in them. Then, his attention, his belief in us make the spaces warm and trustworthy. He actually cares for each thing — tender toward all he has made. And this humanity, this earth, is a 'particular affection'; Jesus being the "pudding" of the proof. In the backdrop of His concern, our daily human meet and greets rise into distinguished events. We, our earth and human realm, don’t have to be all there is to be desirable and beloved -- we may be the smallest part of the universe for all we know, or our universe may be the smallest fragment of whatever else there is. But Jesus, the part of God that is like us (while the rest of Him is not), puts familiarly human arms around this 'particular affection' in case we forgot.

But a “spirit of waste” has sometime entered in. Perhaps it takes advantage of a bruise, a loss, a time when we gave up our faith in the face of pride or pain.  A malicious mindset, intentioned against God’s love of people. It creates disillusionment, isolation and diminishes us until we imagine, falsely, that we are hapless matter heaped here and there. We get used to mockery. What does it matter what we do, whether we cook dinner tonight or decide one day to not come home?  I think it can come where the Lord is not present and disorients us, or at least me. So that I travel long seasons disconnected and live partial -- suffering from, yet largely unaware of, soundless melancholy. 

So come, Lord of the human race, and banish this wasteful thing, that dully loops in our mind; like the reprogrammed security camera in a Hollywood jewelry heist. Instead, revitalize us. Let the goodness we were made for, and made of, unmask mere entertainment. What You have made, each family laughing over their simple jokes, each afternoon window brimming with neighborhood noise —  they were created for joy and treasure. Though we are small, we are not tedious to You. Fill our streets, and cars and offices, and marriage beds and hiking paths and sports fields. Welcome, Jesus.  Fill our throats and stomachs and songs and studies. Light of creation and invention. Genius and Joy, we are Your own. "The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it." Amen.

A Day Out of Time

This day. Full. I watch the blessing spill over and can’t catch it all. A bit frustrated, I wonder if I should try harder. How? So I write.

Less than 24 hours ago we were all preparing for a major hurricane to hit our islands. We stacked our gallons of water and canned beans, dismantled the trampoline and took house photos for future insurance claims. Schools were closed and many grocery store shelves were emptied.

Eerily apocalyptic. But last evening, by the intervention of the “high shear winds”, as the weather people called them, the force of this dark system was suddenly dissolved even as it approached. Ah! Tell me there’s not a metaphysical truth involved. I envision the protective intervention of angels directed to our petitioned defense. But even without a gloriously mysterious narrative, I feel the sigh of relief. Now our whole community is living in what feels like the “day after Thanksgiving” but without the stress of shopping, of distracting and insistent options. Like a day taken out of time, a holy interruption of Chronos. Ironically, impending destruction makes us all hold our breath. And the consequent deep sigh of relief is fodder for better focus. For breathing slower.