Holidays and Other Worries

It’s good to be back from holidays. We took some time to visit family in Saskatchewan and I spent some time at meetings in Calgary. I even had a chance to catch up with a childhood friend who lives in cowboy city. Karen and I usually leave our dog with my parents; but this time, we left Lucy with a local dog-sitter, who did a great job. We had confidence in Lucy’s dog-sitter; and we knew that we had nothing to worry about. That’s the best way to enjoy holidays; when there’s nothing to worry about.

Putting it this way makes it too simple, though. There’s plenty to worry about. A number of our friends in the community are sick. The fields are saturated, and much of this year’s harvest is in limbo. The BP oil spill down south threatens the environment. The Afghanistan war continues to rage with no apparent end in sight. Assaults, murder, thievery, and all kinds of criminal activity are signs of an eroding moral fabric.

Our world is shot-through with frailty and brokenness. Our bodies are frail. Old age begins to weaken the joints, it wears-away at vision and hearing, and undermines our capacity to think clearly. But even younger bodies suffer frailty, as lumps are found in a young boy’s brain, and a young girl fights off the swine flu. Lungs that used to draw deep breaths are hampered by infections and lumps that shorten every inhalation.

Some call these frailties ‘a cycle of life and death’, as though this should lend us a stoic calmness when confronted by our own limitations. “This is just part of what it means to be human,” is what people say, in order to cover-over the shocking reality that all we have ever known (our living) is pressing towards its end (our dying). There are many ways in which our culture moves us to flee from a healthy confrontation with our own mortality; and these reassuring gestures at death’s normalcy just name a few.

Having ‘nothing to worry about’ has little to do with whether or not you can trust your dog-sitter. The question is not whether you have worries or not, but rather: What do we do with our worries? How do we continue-on living in light of life’s frailties? Do we avoid talking or thinking about them? The Christian faith doesn’t have easy answers to my frailties. Heaven, resurrection, and eternity do not spare me from broken bones, ravenous cancer, and relationships that fall to pieces. But I have been moved to place my trust in a man named Jesus, who was as frail as I am; and who, in his frailty, found victory through the gift of a resurrecting Father. And so, in this frailty, I’ll keep going until my time’s up. And what then? A surprise, hopefully, by faith - the surprise of something more restful than holidays in Saskatchewan, more plentiful than a southern Manitoba harvest, and more enjoyable than a dry sunny day.