The Better Within the Worse
I’m beginning to see people for the last time this year.
I got my haircut this past weekend, and, as I was paying my stylist and exchanging final pleasantries, I realized it would be 2025 before I would see her again. “Have a good Thanksgiving!” I said with enthusiasm–then, in the middle of my realization, I awkwardly added “…and Merry Christmas… and a happy New Year!” I smiled because I was genuinely excited for the upcoming holidays, but it was also slightly unsettling, like riding in a car driven by someone who takes you where you want to go, but drives too fast, and takes the corners too sharply.
Objectively, I know I'll be sitting in her chair again six Saturdays from now–the same amount of time I always wait between haircuts-but a disproportionate sense of finality comes over me as I exit and the doorbell loudly declares to the busy hair sculptors inside that someone is leaving, a sound that is their constant companion on their busiest day of the week.
I realize as I write this that my heart was already heavy before I sat down in the barber chair. Several people I know have lost close family members within the past month, and I’ve held those people in my heart and in my prayers. I've offered their pain and grief to God, lifting up my neighbors to him, but I find myself needing to pray the same prayers of benevolent detachment over and again. I would prefer to think this is because, each time I think of them, I experience a new heaviness, a burden which must be newly relinquished, and not because I am continually taking my surrendered heaviness back from the hands of God, but I think it’s probably a mix of both of those things.
Something else… While I was in the semi-conscious state in which I always find myself during a haircut, I listened as several of the stylists talked with their customers and each other about their children suffering from pneumonia in recent weeks. I've heard a few similar reports from parents at our church, but loads of stories from my wife, who teaches elementary school. Our school system has had dozens of cases of young children contracting a disease that I only ever heard of the elderly and immunocompromised getting sick with. Pneumonia? In kids? Really?
I'm bothered and perplexed by this, and I find myself wondering what's happening to the world.
My Granny, God rest her soul, would have just said, “Signs of the times!” while she kept rocking in her easy chair, absentmindedly laboring away at her crochet. This oft-spoken declaration of hers was alluding to the Olivet Discourse, Jesus's response to the disciples' questions about his prophecy regarding the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. It’s full of warnings about false Messiahs, wars, natural disasters, persecution, apostasy, and strange, cosmic signs–all of which proceed the second coming of Christ. 1
People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. (Luke 21:26-28)
A cursory reading of this passage could lead a person to believe that Jesus is advocating for the standard “keep your chin up” attitude, but that isn’t the point of his encouragement. It’s not a pep talk. He’s not saying, “The rest of the world thinks that things are awful, but they really aren’t. Your fear is inexcusable. Tough it up, buttercup.” He’s actually saying the opposite. Jesus is telling us that, even when the world is coming to an end, when hell is breaking in on our reality, when the sun and moon fall under the sway of chaos and entropy, when there are no “safe spaces” left, and God knows and expects we will be afraid, we can look to him, and it changes us. It doesn’t erase the cause or experience of our terror, but it does change our identity, the role we play in the story.
David knew what this was like:
When I am afraid,
I will trust in you.
In God, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I will not be afraid.
What can mere mortals do to me?Psalm 56:3-4 (CSB)
This is not a simple decision or act of willpower. It is not a matter of trying harder. It is, instead, when we stop trying and surrender, a continually renewed trust that–continually–takes us from a place of “when I am afraid” to “I will not be afraid.”
A few hours after my haircut, I take a mid-day walk on the greenway that runs along a section of Candies Creek close to our home. The sun is an hour from reaching the horizon. It is a welcome, bright, and warming presence, and it calls from within me a wakefulness that had lately been dormant. I walk for an hour, a much longer walk in full sunlight than I am able to afford on weekdays, simply because my work day is currently bookended by an increasingly tardy sunrise, which coincides with the beginning of my shift, and sunset, which hovers around 5:30 PM between the months of November and January.
When I arrive at the current stopping point for the greenway,2 I pause my walking and meander a while near the creek. Maybe it’s because I sometimes come to this spot to think–I’m not sure–but I'm reminded of a recent text exchange I had with an old friend, in this very spot. I was complaining about how our favorite city park–a peaceful, somewhat-wild walking spot–had recently been transformed into a frisbee golf course. I complained, “You can’t walk around without hearing a sound like a soccer ball being kicked into a chain-link fence, or without being mindful of potentially getting hit by a plastic disc.”
In one of his replies, my friend said, “It’s like everything just gets worse; it doesn't get better.”
I balked when I originally read that text, and I had a really strong impulse to shoot something back at him that would contradict what he said and squash his pessimism, but I couldn't come up with anything. I just stood there, staring at my cell phone, the sound of the creek mingling with noise from the nearby interstate.
I come home, still a little heavy-hearted, still wanting to defend the idea that “it’s not all that bad.” I get out my phone again and reread the text conversation I had with my friend. Then it hits me why I've felt so defensive, and I realize what my comeback is.
I’m getting better.
The New Testament teaches that believers are granted the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit as a deposit or down payment of the new creation–“the life of the Age to come,” as Jesus phrases it in the gospels. This means God's work of redemption, which will one day culminate in the renewal of all creation, has already begun within believers. The Holy Spirit serves as a guarantee of the full inheritance of eternal life and the new creation to come. For example, Ephesians 1:13–14, which reads:
And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory. (NIV)
So, then, the life of the believer is already going in the opposite direction of the entropic dance of the rest of the cosmos, toward the eternally new life of union with the Holy Trinity.
But when I say that I'm getting better, I'm not just speaking eschatologically. I also mean that the every day, in and out work of the Holy Spirit is to mature me, heal me, and, as St. Paul put it, conform me to the image of the Son. And it is working, friends.
I am not perfect, but the work He is doing is perfect, and it is working, thanks be to God.
The Olivet Discourse is found in some form or another in all three of the synoptic gospels, in Matthew 24–25, Mark 13, and Luke 21.
The city of Cleveland, TN plans to connect the Candies Creek Greenway with the existing Fletcher Park walking paths–a distance of only a quarter of a mile, as the crow flies–but a bridge will have to be built over the creek to connect to two walkways, so funding is the barrier to project completion.