Things I thought while walking around during a Plague

“Cosmo, I just want you to know that no matter what you do, you’re still gonna die. Okay?”

(Moonstruck)

Spring

There’s a lot of people out walking. We’re all walking for the sake of walking, moving around, one foot in front of the other, going nowhere. But the sun is shining and it’s either walk or stay inside glued to some screen, working on my terrible posture while morbidly tracking statistics. As Mark Twain (possibly) said, “There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The mainstream media, social media and the self-proclaimed experts are offloading their wares in all three categories non-stop these days, but I’m not interested in buying so I head outside instead in a daily quest to get the step count into a self-satisfying range. I walk past the densely packed homes in my district and inspect my neighbours’s flower beds for plant inspiration; trying not to grow too attached to the idea of a front yard full of bosomy peonies in all their glory. I need shade plants of the sort that L.M Montgomery might have waxed poetic in one of her novels. Shy greenery and tiny winsome blooms that thrive in the whispering shadows. They are hard to find though, most people don’t bother much with trying to make things grow in inhospitable places.

I pick up my pace and reflexively glance at a my disappointing number of steps. Keep it moving, unless you want to gain the Covid-19. (Too late.) I come to the end of the houses and pass by the construction sites with newly printed signs hung on the fences warning the tradesmen to work in specific ways while under the cloud of this novel corona virus. “Novel Coronavirus”, the news anchors wearing jewel tones say it with such solemnity.

I consider titling my next book, Novel Coronavirus. Of course, I would have to start a brand new manuscript for it—none of the three works-in-progress could carry such a moniker. Search engine optimization would undoubtedly be in my favour;— for all that marketing and promotion that I am (supposed to be) doing.

The toe of my shoe catches slightly on an uneven lip in the sidewalk and I pitch forward as though shoved by a foe. I catch myself in the sudden rush of adrenalin and feel my face grow slightly warm at the thought that someone at the construction site saw me. Like that time in high school when a new pair of shoes with a thicker sole (Damn you, platform Converse trend!) caught the lip of a step and sent me sprawling up the central staircase. Arms valiantly windmilling, I caught the hand rail with both hands; hauling myself—hand over hand—up the last few steps while my legs dangled uselessly behind me. I vaguely wonder if platform Converse are still a thing as I regain my stride and keep walking as though nothing has happened. After all, I’m no teenager battling insecurity anymore. I can shake off an embarrassment. Besides, since I can’t help but laugh at physical comedy, I can hardly resent providing it for some poor soul peeking out behind the curtains. I see a lot of them these days;—people staring out their front windows, or standing in their doorway looking out on the world. It’s a strange thing to see so many people doing it. We’re all looking out the window as though we might see the end of the plague coming down the street.

I leave the construction site behind and walk past the barren lot covered with weeds still thinking about the signs on the fences. Will future people unearth these weathered metal signs in curio shops and marvel that they were hung during the scourge of COVID-19? Will they blow away the dust gathered in the intervening decades, read the public health instructions and find us quaint? Perhaps these future people will collect them as memorabilia of this bygone era; hanging them ironically around their homes. But instead of “Keep Calm and Carry On” emblazoned on everything from coffee mugs to pillow cases, and Rosie the Riveter displaying her bicep and can-do attitude; it will be the anemic messaging of “Stay Home. Stay Safe” and “Practice Social Distancing”.  Hardly the inspirational stuff of two generations ago, but maybe our fearful measures will seem endearing to the people of the future in the same way that we find leeches and blood-letting curious medical treatments of the past. “Oh, those ignorant little dears, they just did the best that they could. Like superstitious children, they were…”

Because, after all, isn’t that how we all tend to view the collective wisdom of previous generations? We assume that whatever we have attained in the present age is better than what came before it. Our attitudes are more virtuous. Our thinking more nuanced. Our societies have evolved. That’s a pet peeve of mine: the usage of the word evolved. It’s a badge to show your bona fides. You didn’t learn something. You evolved. Learning requires effort, pursuit, discernment and practice. Evolution requires nothing of the individual except a fortunate set of genes. My mind wanders backward to a bygone biology class showing Darwin’s drawing of the beaks of Galapagos finches who found the right sized seed for the times. “Darwin’s Beak” might also be a good title for a book. Maybe it could be about the way that we think we are advanced and wise when really we are just the ungratefully fortunate beneficiaries of all that came before.

My gaze falls upon the thistles that are getting along like gang-busters in the empty lot. Deep green and thriving; their stalks are thicker than my thumb as they pass the three foot mark. Those spines are more dangerous than a lot of items confiscated by airport security;—including the new tube of toothpaste I lost on my way to Vancouver a few years ago. What a different world that was. Being able to leave one place and fly to another. We didn’t even know how free we were.

But a lot of people don’t feel that way, I realize, and it shocks me. “Free” is just an abstract idea to them—and a dangerous one—whereas “safe” is the ultimate good. The sudden intrusion of government power hasn’t rankled some the way it has me. But the petty tyrants are popping up everywhere and their calls to the quarantine-related snitch lines reveal just how thin our social fabric has worn. When this plague has subsided, will it be airport security that demands passengers wear masks, or will it be the finger wagging of other passengers who demand it? I think know the answer already and it depresses me.  But maybe this madness of control will pass as fatigue with the fear of life and death begins to set in. 

I doubt it—but maybe.

Summer

I’m still walking—the same route around the empty lots and the place where the school buses are parked, lined up neatly in two long rows like yellow pills in the hands of an OCD apothecary. ‘Apothecary’ is such a fun word, while ‘pharmacist’ has had all the whimsy wrung out of it. The buses haven’t moved in months, empty of their charges, even as the playground nearby languishes in prison; blockaded behind a steel fence meant to keep everyone oh-so-safe from a virus with a 98% survival rate. I shake my head and keep moving. The thistles have bloomed spiky purple crowns and begun to die in the summer heat. The ground around them is cracked and parched and, I kid you not, tumbleweeds are rolling by me in a perfect picture of western desolation as a hot wind gusts over the face of the land. If only I had a faded cotton print dress on and a sunburned face to complete the picture. But I don’t. I put on sunscreen because I’ve been conditioned to do so by the fear of “the effects of aging”. Same, I suppose, as all the people wearing masks to keep an unseen virus at bay;— or away from other people— or to show what good people they are… It’s hard to keep track of the reasons for our measures anymore. Gone are the “wash your hands” and “don’t touch your face” instructions from mid-March. We’ve entered into some new phase of counter measures. You can feel it in the atmosphere. I think about getting a bunch of cloves of garlic on a string to wear around my neck, you know, in case this coronavirus just also happens to be a vampire.

A car passes me and the driver’s features are obscured by a swath of light blue fabric. He’s all alone in his car wearing a surgical mask and I want to ask him who he is protecting. Did he just forget to take it off? Or is that “PPE” doing a better job than the steel and glass of his car in protecting him from the danger of a COVID miasma  in case he should happen to drive through one. I could ask the black masked bicyclist who rode by too—but he wasn’t around long enough to chat.

It doesn’t really matter, though. The message is clear. Stay safe. Stay safe. Stay safe… it’s on constant repeat from the government, the businesses that have finally been allowed to open, the signs in the windows of private homes; not to mention the messages from the glitterati on their social media platforms desperate for relevancy. Stay safe.  One could be forgiven for thinking that the phrase has been trademarked and is earning cents on the dollar every time it is used in conversation.

I want to escape but there’s no where to go. Even the astronauts who left Earth’s problems behind on SpaceX’s Dragon capsule on May 30th had to come back to its shelter eventually on August 3rd. What must that be like, I wonder, to go into a hostile atmosphere that requires every ingenuity of Man in order to survive? In space, you’ll know whether your mask works or not.

I shake my head again, wishing to shed the tiresome subject like a dog shakes water from his coat. I look at the beauty of the billows of white stacking up on the horizon against Alberta’s impossibly blue August sky. The sky is bluer here than in other places. I don’t know why, but it’s true.  More so than ever before in my life, heaven is calling. This world is not my home, and I’m feeling it. There’s a row of poplars swaying their hips in breeze and somehow the fluttering of the leaves makes it seem as though time has stood still even though I’m still walking and the cars are whooshing by with snatches of their music reaching my ears. The atmosphere of the culture has been oppressive and like the summer heat that breaks into a terrific storm, I can’t help but wish for lightening to crack with a deafening boom and roar and reshuffle the deck of cards that we’re all playing with.

Autumn

The trees are shedding their gold leaf to pave the gutters and the flowers are beginning to look weary. For the first time since this juggernaut of Fear began, it feels as though something might be beginning to shift—to crack—letting the light get in a la Leonard Cohen. It’s faint and glimmering, and sometimes I can’t catch sight of it at all, but more and more the artifice feels like it is beginning to crumble. 

I breathe a sigh of relief and feel myself walking faster; walking taller as a smile spreads across my face like a wave flooding the shore. This is what I’ve been missing for months and months—the gladness of faith in the goodness of today. The leaves swish and crunch under the soles of my shoes. The air is as crisp and sweet as the first bite of the apple harvest. It has been ages since it felt like there was something to be glad about. It has been ages since I felt like singing just for the joy of it.

I’m rounding the way back toward home. The distance is shortening all the time, and as I walk along part of me wants to turn aside and add to the journey, walking further and longer because this is the day that the Lord has made for me to rejoice and be glad in it.  And, why shouldn’t I? Why rush back to a chair and the loud voices who wish to direct my thoughts and words toward their aims? I only owe my allegiance to God. He holds me in the palm of His hand and He made this day for gladness. It washes over me in a slow—bearable—realization, that this has been true for each day in this miasmic season of fear.

Only I can give place in my thoughts to desolation because this wide beautiful world wears its griefs on its face while it tells lies with pathological abandon; because mankind is a ruin of wonderful intentions. Because even the people you love and admire will disappoint, betray and misunderstand you.

So I turn aside—like Moses—to enjoy this thing that He is doing. To listen for the words that He is speaking; to keep walking wherever He leads. “Perfect love casts out fear”, and what is perfect love but God Himself?

Winter

It’s coming on Christmas but it only feels like it when the snow falls down in big flakes and gets caught in the faux fur on my hood. I’m walking in different shoes these days and taking smaller steps; shuffling along over the slippery patches with only a few adrenalin-inducing losses of balance. Animals have left their footprints in the snow as well; leaving me to muse over their tracks of differing intentions. 

Halloween’s ghoulish decorations are disappearing—though the forgotten pumpkins are getting more and more ghastly in their frigid decay on front steps. Sparkle and red is beginning to dot the city like stars appearing the the night sky as people trim up their doors for the new season with holly and pine boughs bedecked with ribbons and bows to greet all the guests we aren’t supposed to invite over. There is a perverse irony to the solemnity with which the experts and political leaders are talking of cancelling Christmas. There was another leader who felt that the coming of Christ was too dangerous, as well. King Herod the Great mandated the Slaughter of the Innocents in order to lockdown the coming of the Messiah, as it were.

All of summer’s flowers are frozen into twisted clumps of branches and twigs; denuded of their leaves and contorted by the icy breath of winter and a weight of snow. It isn’t as easy to keep walking at this temperature. There’s something about the cold that makes you feel weary. It’s the deadly deception of the frozen North: the temptation to fall asleep in the snow. The wind cuts through the folds in my clothes and my eyes begin to water. It’s hard to imagine lying in a drift and falling asleep, perhaps because the snow isn’t deep enough to be an inviting bed, but it also isn’t quite cold enough to give up yet.

Winter has a way of killing things—and it’s a good thing, too. On the insect front alone, it is a really good thing. There’s a lot of stuff that grows in the comfort of the temperate zone that needs a deep frost to wipe out. But good things die back in winter too and so it makes us afraid. I was rewatching that old series Pioneer’s Quest: A year in the Real West—where two couples lived as homesteaders in Manitoba with only the tools and means that would have been available in 1860. They built their shelters. They took care of the animals they needed to plow the land. They sowed and harvested their crops by hand. They experienced failure and had to depend on neighbours for knowledge and help. They got sick and it was scary. It was hard, hard work—and they loved it.

Besides the personal inconveniences of no indoor plumbing or toilet paper—what struck me was their focused awareness of the season. How imperative understanding the times and the seasons were for their very survival. Plant your crops too late in the spring and you’ll starve in the winter. Spring, summer and fall are the seasons of intense productivity. Winter is the season of trust; where we must believe that on the other side of all this cold and death, there will be a resurrection.

Things are coming to the surface in us all—the idols—the gods that we fear.  Whether it is fearing death from a disease, or tyranny brought in under the auspices of combatting it, or whether it is feeling virtuous for meeting all the ever-ballooning measures, or feeling justified in ignoring each instance of government overreach--idols, all. They can all be ideas that we serve with fear and trembling, without realizing that they aren’t gods at all. Fear, and its hand-maiden, Self-righteousness, must die in the cold of this season so that what is true and real remains. The homesteaders knew it back in the day, and we’re learning it again: our lives are in God’s hands—always. 

It has always been thus--; but we've forgotten it. We've come to trust in the illusion of our own control. In the prudent and responsible use of seat belts and helmets; healthy diets and good exercise; masks and hand sanitizer, and so on.  But then the Winter of Circumstance comes and destroys the illusions of our strength and betrays our truly fragile state. We may rage against it and attempt to reassert our control through the proclamation of Science™ and rule by experts, and schoolmarming one another with wagging fingers and calls to snitch lines, but the fact remains unchanged by the depths of Winter's death: we are so fragile. And, we cannot forget it. 

This awareness of our fragility presents us with a war of perspectives. To give rein to fear; seeking to return to the comfort of the illusion of our control. Or, to rest in that intangible faith that the loving Father who sent His only Son to save us carries us in the providence of His will. 

This winter is long and dark, but the resurrection is coming.  Just keep walking.

The Danger Within

Even as a child I wanted to hear God’s voice. I was promised in Sunday school that He was individually interested and that He spoke to each one of us through His Word. Looking to test this, I would pull my Children’s Explorer’s Bible off the bookshelf lined with my grizzled collection of My Little Ponies, and flop down on my bed; open the book at random, and drop my finger somewhere on the exposed pages to see what God had to say to me. I didn’t really think it worked like that—the spiritual equivalent of spinning the globe with your eyes closed to find out where you should live—but I thought it was worth a try. If memory serves, God didn’t have any specific messages for me.

These days I find myself doing slightly more sophisticated versions of the same foolish thing because I still want to hear God’s voice speak directly to me. I want Him to talk to me about the things that are close to my heart and the things that are close to His. Sometimes I think I’m listening to the Holy Spirit, but I hear my own heart instead. It is so easy to err when God starts to sound a little bit too much like me.

Few of the deceptions that we face in life are as unvarnished as an email from an obscure Nigerian prince with an inheritance to bestow upon those who speedily reply with their banking details. Even the slickest of con men seeking to swindle the unsuspecting out of their money are only mere entry-level deceivers. True deception—the kind you really need to be on guard against—has a far subtler hand. It oozes in through the cracks in the brickwork of your life; it pushes open the unlatched gate; entering through the broken places you just haven’t gotten around to mending yet. And it isn’t after your money, but rather your soul.

“The heart is deceitful above all things. 

And desperately wicked; 

Who can know it?” 

(Jeremiah 17:9)

Culturally, the heart—the seat of our emotions— is lauded as the most trustworthy organ of decision. Following one’s heart is the irrefutable defence; the final say on a matter; the trump card that has no equal. The heart is the means by which the unbelieving world chooses its way. Absent the Holy Spirit, the World must feel its way forward, rather than discern what the Spirit of Wisdom is speaking.

The scriptural warning against the heart is not an embargo against emotion. Human beings are made in the image of God and our emotional capacity finds its original template in the Most High. But real deception invites your emotions to dance. It offers you its hand through offence, jealousy, fear, anger, lust, despair, or pride;— until it whirls you about in a flurry of feeling and confusion; never tiring in order that the room never stops spinning. Emotions are a powerful counterfeit for truth because they feel so true—and we feel powerful when we feel so much. Wisdom, however, promises no such affectation. 

Discernment is the spiritual means of perception, and it is a function of the Holy Spirit. It is the ability to differentiate the whole truth from the half-truths—the genuine from the counterfeit—amid the cacophony of emotional noise. It is the only remedy against deception; the still small voice that reveals what is true as opposed to that which only feels true. It’s worth contemplating then, that the Holy Spirit came to rest upon Jesus as a dove;—a sensitive creature apt to take off at the slightest surprise. No dove ever came to rest upon someone in the middle of a temper tantrum. Likewise, the Spirit of Discernment, cannot be heard when an emotional reaction has been given free rein to guide. The voice of wisdom is heard by the quieted soul in a posture of humility who is longing to hear. It’s not complicated, but it is hard.

(A version of this article was published in the July/August edition of live magazine. Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com)

Faith Pursuing Real

I write stories for a living. I invent people and stick them in impossible scenarios to see how they manage. Usually, when I start writing I have some idea where I want these characters to end up; whether they will behave nobly or ignobly, —usually a mixture of both—as they confront the obstacles I throw in their path. The trouble is, characters—like the Velveteen Rabbit who was loved by his boy—eventually become real. Real to me at least, and then I can’t do a thing with them. I write scenes and put words in their mouths and they stubbornly disagree and refuse to say them with any kind of conviction. The action of the story stalls. The other characters look at the floor, awkwardly pretending not to notice my embarrassing faux pas, and the writing comes to a dead end until I delete all the way back to authenticity. Characters who have revealed who they are can’t be manipulated into being someone they aren’t.

God also has a stubborn way of being real and not taking my stage direction. More often than not, He doesn’t say the thing I want Him to say, and the stuff He does say;—well, let’s just say that God isn’t particularly concerned about human opinions. He is who He is.  

I can always tell when I’ve tried to put words in His mouth or force His hand when the conversation goes dead and I find I’ve painted myself into an uncomfortable spiritual corner with no where to go. Once again I realize that I’ve tried to call the shots and write both sides of the conversation. It’s embarrassing but I don’t think it’s just me. It’s a bad habit that plagues us all. Humanity doesn’t want a God with His own opinions. We want a god whose rules enable us to live as we please; who we can pick up with our hands; and see our own reflection in the gold-plated surface and set aside again whenever convenience suits.

But God is real and the faith that He gives us to pursue Him is far more unwieldy than a set of religious dictates. Faith is vision and the drive to pursue the God who is the destination of life’s arduous climb. Sometimes the path of faith is steep and harrowing. Sometimes we pause out of breath with every exhausted muscle screaming for reprieve, and doubt whether we have another step in us. But the view is from the height is something else.

After their victorious exodus from Egypt, the Children of Israel elected to stay at the foot of the mountain. The God who had rescued them through wonders and signs was too frightening to meet face to face.  

“You talk to Him,” they implored Moses, “and we’ll do whatever you say.”

Moses’s faith drew him up the mountain because he alone longed for God’s presence. The people, however, stayed far below, content to cater to their fears and appetites. What each of them saw of God depended on where they stood. Moses climbed the mountain and entered the glory cloud of God’s presence where the Almighty spoke to him; revealing His thoughts and plans as one might share with a friend. But to those who wanted nothing to do with God Himself,  “To the Israelites at the foot of the mountain, the glory of the LORD appeared at the summit as a consuming fire.”  (Exodus 24:17)

At a distance, God will always be frightening to us—no matter how many oceans He’s parted, or how many desperate prayers He has answered. When we stand far off and resist the beckoning of faith, He is terror and destruction to our eyes. Yet when we dare to approach Him, He envelopes us in His glory cloud and unclasps His heart. The destination of faith is God alone. It is to be taken into His presence; to experience the revelation of who He is. God will always resist our habitual attempts to fashion Him into our image. After all, He’s real and He is who He is.

(A version of this article was published in the May/June edition of live magazine. Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com).

Confessions of a Spiritual Narcoleptic

I’ve been trying to solve a narrative puzzle in one of my manuscripts for quite some time. I’m 90,000+ words into the drama and dire things are afoot, but I haven’t figured out what to do with one particular character and this has put the brakes on all my progress (such as it is). What to do with the old man? I ask myself this question day in, day out, while I fiddle about the edges of the story, bedazzling the language with adjectives I will no doubt have to savagely edit out in a later draft. But what to do with the old man? It’s the question that plagues my thoughts.

Given that I’ve been in this holding pattern for quite some time, you’d think that when inspiration struck the other night as I was waiting for sleep to come, that I would have bolted out of bed and written it down. Aha! Eureka! Old man problem solved at long last! You might think that, but you would have been wrong. Morgan—as I condescendingly refer to myself when dealing with the personal attributes I find frustrating—Morgan thought, “I’ll remember and do it in the morning.”

Of course I didn’t remember. Of course I don’t even have a sliver of the slightest indication of what I was going to do with the old man. And so, now I sit, berating my lethargy in a blog post instead of working on the manuscript that is somehow ballooning into a series against all my wishes. 

If only I hadn’t fallen asleep. 

I feel like I’m always falling asleep when the plot is thickening; dropping out of consciousness at the most inopportune times only to emerge groggy and incoherent days later as though I’ve gone on some existential bender that I can’t quite remember. And not just regarding the fictional plots that I am working on, but the actual plot that I am in, as well. Questions flood my not-quite-firing synapses as I find myself looking blearily about. “Wasn’t God saying something to me? I feel like He was saying something to me that I shouldn’t have forgotten…”

It’s one thing to forget what to do with the fictional old man. It’s quite another to forget what the Son of Man has said. I’m not the first to feel this way;—that there is something terribly important to remember that is slipping past my fingertips. I am like Jill Pole in C.S Lewis’s The Silver Chair who was given important signs to look for from Aslan when she first arrives in Narnia, but the further into the adventure she goes, the fuzzier the details become. Were there four signs? Oh dear, oh dear…

Jill forgets and I fall asleep. 

At times it seems that God speaks so clearly—He even gets me to repeat things over and over like Aslan instructed Jill, so that muscle memorization might save my faulty consciousness. But somehow even so, the lesser things of daily life drive the words from my mind. I think I won’t forget, but I do. I’ll happen across an old journal entry or a half-written blog post and find the echoes of an old conversation with God and I remember with a pang. It had been so clear, and now I can’t find the notes to the tune.

The atmosphere of the world that we all live in is soporific. It lulls us into a somnolent daze—like Dorothy and her Ozian friends in the bewitched field of poppies—we lay down for a moment and wake to find the world has changed and time is shorter than ever. 

Dorothy wakes to the cold of snow falling, whereas I’ve woken to a world afire with fear of a virus. The media preaches panic. More than ever social media has revealed itself as an aggressive exchange of mutual ignorance. Now—more than ever—it is time to unplug from the collective wisdom of the world. The situation is no doubt serious, and serious situations have a way of bringing us all to full consciousness.

It is hard to stay sleepy when an alarm is blaring and the earth is shaking.

The thing is, the alarm that is blaring for me is not a warning about the danger of coronavirus. Sure, I’ll follow the measures that my local jurisdiction has enacted, but the alert that is sounding in my spirit isn’t about the spread of a disease. Instead, it is a call to faith. It is akin to the bugle call that summons the soldiers to the battle field, rather than a fire alarm that clears a building. 

A summons to fight the good fight of faith is different than the warning a fire alarm. Those with no weapons, or training, or will to fight, will flee an oncoming battle at the trilling of the bugle, while those who are prepared will make themselves ready and show up to contend with the enemy for victory. 

This is one of those moments when we wake up to the reality that our theology must become more than an intellectual adherence to a set of Christian doctrines. This is the bugle call to the spiritual battlefield of faith. And while for some that battlefield will take place in physical terms in facing sickness. For most of us, however,  it will manifest in the realm of our thoughts. What do we really believe? Is it just a nice symbolic thought that God is our refuge in times of trouble? That He will protect us from the deadly pestilence as Psalm 91 proclaims? Or do we regard that as foolhardy and view the promises of faith as valid only in an abstract spiritual sense; possibly to only be cashed in on after death?

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruits.” (Proverbs 18:21)

This verse has come to mind so many times as I scroll through the headlines hoping to catch a glimpse of the horizon on this pandemic. But I had it backwards. I kept thinking it said “Life and death” not, “Death and life.” Oh well, same meaning, isn’t it? And yes, I suppose it is, but a writer puts words together with care and that order is not indifferent to the intended meaning. Death comes first for a reason. Death comes first because that is our natural inclination in speech. We talk about what goes wrong. We discuss the mistakes and screw ups long before we add the addendum of what worked out—; that is, if we remember to mention the good at all.

Death comes first because it is the curse that needs lifting. Life follows it because it has the strength to undo the curse. At risk of going back to the same trope over and over, remember the uninvited fairy in the original fairytale of Sleeping Beauty who cursed the infant princess with death upon touching the spindle of a spinning wheel? The evil fairy sought that her pronouncement of death upon the princess would be the last word, but there was one small fairy left with a blessing of life to offer. 

Death comes first because it is swallowed up by life, not the other way around. The proclamations of death are overwhelmed by the words of Life that follow. Jesus stunned His followers with a hard teaching and watched them all recoil and drift away. He then asked the Twelve if they would leave Him, too. And, Peter, in a shining moment responded, “Where are we to go? You have the words of Life.”

Death is swallowed by the words of Life. It's time to wake up and speak.

One of the Faded People

It used to be that if you were going to see people begging in Calgary, you had to be Downtown. That isn’t the case anymore. There’s the young guy with his cardboard identity of “Homeless because of PTSD” sitting outside Superstore begging for change while playing on his smartphone. There’s another sitting outside the bookstore with his dog in a faded pile of blankets. His shift coincides with that of the veiled woman at the nearby intersection making the rounds of drivers’s windows before the light changes. A bag of fresh buns—given in place of money—lies discarded and unopened on the side of the road.

Maybe this proliferation of begging—this symptom of social sickness—is a result of the economic downturn that our province has endured. Maybe it is part of a crisis of mental illness and addiction. Or, perhaps our culture is merely living out the downstream physical consequences of our spiritual bankruptcy. A family friend—no stranger to addiction and psychological difficulties—once poetically referred to these denizens of the streets, as ‘the Faded People’.

I confess, sympathy is not the predominant emotion I feel when I see the guy with his sign and his smartphone, or when I see someone else’s gift of groceries disdained and trampled. It is more like an unholy irritation at the attempted emotional manipulation; at being asked to participate in whatever dysfunction is being perpetuated.

I realized the other morning, though—in a flash of revelation—how often I am like one of the faded people to God. I go about my days looking to feed my addiction to pride and my own opinions. Always seeking the next distraction that will make me feel good for the present. I approach God with a hand extended for a coin—a pittance— instead of surrendering all so that He can transform my life of rags. I hold up a tattered sign bearing an identity meant to invoke pity in order to get what I want. I sit in the faded remnants of better days and resent it when God doesn’t feed my unhealthy habits by answering my sickly prayers.

I need my very desires to be transformed. The Bible tells us that we are made in the image of God—an astounding statement. It implies that our very freedom of will is a shadow of God’s own freedom of will. We cannot be made to change. We must choose it for ourselves. We must choose the greater joy of being abandoned to God’s perfect will over the lesser comfort of having our own way for the moment.