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Chronicles in Ordinary Time
An Illustrated Journey
3 June 2009
He who has never hoped can never despair.
George Bernard Shaw
Discouragement.
Discouragement is the enemy with which I struggle most fiercely.
As a Bible-believing Christian, some would say that I have no business allowing
discouragement to enter my life. To that statement I would reply, “you either
haven’t been paying attention; or you have been exceedingly fortunate.”
I’ve been reading Philip Yancey’s Where is God When It
Hurts, and he reminds us that ”it’s a good thing to remember, when we
encounter dark, disturbing times, that we live out our days on Easter Saturday…That
darkest Friday is now called Good because of what happened on Easter Sunday… The
miracle of Easter will enlarge to cosmic scale.”
Every day I’m bombarded with the pain that the world suffers,
and once again I’ve been wandering around the entrance to the Valley of the Shadow of
Death. God does not always remove our pain, but He carries us through those times when we
feel Alone…only we aren’t alone. But it often takes the perspective of
time-to-come to see this truth.
Hero movies. I’m big on hero movies; and they are becoming harder,
in the current world, to find. Hero movies help me to cope. I am thankful for the new Star
Trek movie, and the rumor that more may come. Movies where the protagonist is more than,
‘better than the bad guy’. Hero movies remind me that sometimes it’s worth
going through pain and difficulty to accomplish a larger purpose. John McClain gets the
stuffing kicked out of him, but he remains, ‘that guy’ [watch Die Hard 4]. John
Wayne was my age in some of his best Western hero movies, although that fact doesn’t
really make much difference. In Chinese hero movies, the hero usually dies; this is one
way that you can tell that they are the heroes. This world is not our Home.
If I lived in an evangelical fundamentalist world, I might write down
the ’10 Steps to Overcoming Discouragement;’ in my world, I have no real
answers. Only questions and observations. Some of my favorite observations:
Never despair, but if you do, work on in
despair.
Edmund Burke
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always
though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me;
you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Thomas Merton
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Published
Issues
1
March 2009
19 March 2009
8
April 2009 |
