Two years ago I shared this inspiring excerpt from a book on the blog. I came across it today as I was going through my archives. It struck me, this time around, as a symbol of hope for our East Coast, battling in just this last week an earthquake, and now preparing for a hurricane.
From Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (2002)
Set in 1665 England, in a small town quarantined because of the Plague.
“It is a strange prospect, our main street these days. I used to rue its dustiness in summer and mudiness in winter, the rain all rizen in the wheel ruts making glassy hazards for the unwary stepper. But now there is neither ice nor mud nor dust, for the road is grassed over, with just a cow track down the center where the slight use of a few passing feet has worn the weeds down. For hundreds of years, the people of this village have pushed Nature back from its precincts. It has taken less than a year to begin to reclaim its place. In the very middle of the street, a walnut shell lies broken, and from it, already, sprouts a sapling that wants to grow up to block our way entire. I have watched it from its first seed leaves, wondering when someone would pull it out. No one has yet done so, and now it stands already a yard high. Footprints testify that we are all walking around it. I wonder if its indifference, or whether, like me, others are so brimful of endings that they cannot bear to wrench even a scrawny sapling from its tenuous grip on life.”
That little tree was a symbol of hope – a promise that life does go on – a reminder that though your world seems turned upside down there are still constants and signs of hope, which occur without fanfare throughout creation: oblivious to the surrounding human suffering, a broken shell sprouts a seedling, which grow up into a tree, like they have done since the beginning of time. The recognition of the steadfastness of creation, the perseverance of life, even amidst plague, earthquakes, and hurricanes, is a comfort to the human soul.
But of what greater comfort is the steadfastness of the love of God!
My family has been hit with several life-shaking events over the past week as well, though we’re insulated from the East Coast weather patterns here in Kentucky. Nine days ago my almost-two-year-old son slipped on the floor and fractured his femur. As I was dialing the number to call the doctor, and as Daniel lay screaming and crying on the sofa, my dad called and told me that his mother, who has been ill for years, has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and this time will not recover. She has days, maybe a week or two to live. Pause. I was speechless. To my horror, he continued. My grandfather, from the other side of the family, was just diagnosed with advanced colon cancer, which has spread to his liver. He would go in for surgery two days later. Like an earthquake, my steady little world was shaken, all in a matter of minutes, and I lost my balance and desperately needed a grip.
Through tears and confusion, trying to process this all, and comfort my toddler crying in pain, God graciously brought this verse to my mind:
“But we have this treasure [the light of the Gospel] in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.”(2 Corinthians 4:7-10)
I got out my Bible (i.e. opened my netbook and Googled “2 Corinthians, ESV”) and read it. Then I read it again.
Who could argue? We are fragile and breakable. We are easily overwhelmed. But the surpassing power of God – not us – brings us through. And it brings us through. Every. Single. Time. Without fail. And as He perseveres us through affliction, through confusion, through forsakenness, through injury, our very lives, despite their frailty – no, because of our frailty – show the world that HE is our hope. He is far more than a tiny tree pushing up the ground to reach for new life – He IS the solid ground we stand on when the earth shakes. He IS the life we live when we are dying. He is the hope and the light we look to when our friends or relatives or neighbors are suffering. When we rely on Him through all these stages of death and despair, we display the eternal life of Jesus within us.
It is the kind of hope you see through tears, but then what a mighty hope indeed it appears, when all else has failed, to realize that God is all you need, and that His love, through faith in Christ, is free.
As I contemplated this amazing mercy, Daniel still crying, his leg growing swollen, the phone still in my hand, I steadied myself against the back of the sofa. New tears and emotion overwhelmed my despair. The Lord is so good, I thought. The Lord is so good. And He is enough.
East Coast – your world is shaken, and the hurricane’s path moves steadily onward, now just a day away, but God’s love is steadfast and eternal. Far more than a glimmer of hope, the reconciliation He offers through faith in Christ is the radiant light of everlasting life in His presence. In light of that glory, we can say of every conceivable trial:
“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)
photo: CC Ian’s Shutter Habit
