Tuesday, May 17, 2022
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Suffering will always be provided
It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.
Lystra, Derbe, Antioch, Iconium, Pisidia, Pamphylia, Perga, Attalia. Paul and Barnabas walked, slept, preached, healed, were beaten, and walked some more. The stories of their travels and the churches they began would fill books. DO fill books. Not unlike great athletes, they left everything they had everywhere they went with everyone they met.
We had dinner with friends last night and talked about our childhoods, about childbirth, about churches we cared for and churches we didn’t. We talked about religion and politics and Italy and Texas, and we talked about camping in a tepee and spending just the right amount of time with cowboys. We talked about the Moonies. Margaret and Charlie have both taken classes in OLLI (Lifelong Learning):  classes about Scotland, musicals, Old San Antonio, and the Opera in Austin. We turned over shovel after shovel of conversational sand, and found no little gold in our turning.
Your kingdom is a kingdom for all ages, and your dominion endures through all generations. May my mouth speak the praise of the Lord, and may all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.
I’m reading The Penguin History of the World, and we talked a little about this. I’ve gotten to the part where Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon and stabs the Roman republic in its heart. Julius himself will soon be stabbed as well.
In another book I’m reading, The Burnt-Out Case, Graham Greene begins by describing his man Querry’s ten day trip down the Congo River in the summer. “I feel discomfort, therefore I am alive,” he wrote in his mostly empty journal. The steamboat stopped at a riverside seminary housed in a single red brick building, where the captain had once taught Greek. There they spent the night. After supper the passenger retired to his room.
The Superior looked in Querry’s jug to see whether it was full. “You will find the water very brown,” he said, “but it is quite clean.” He lifted the lid of a soap dish to assure himself that the soap had not been forgotten. A brand new orange tablet lay there. “Lifebuoy,” the Superior said proudly.
“I haven’t used Lifebuoy since I was a child,” the passenger said. The Superior spoke again. “Many people say it is good for prickly heat. But I never suffer from that.”
And suddenly the passenger found himself unable any longer not to speak. He said, “Nor I. I suffer from nothing. I no longer know what suffering is. I have come to an end of all that too. Like all the rest. To the end of everything.”
The Superior turned away from him, without curiosity. “Oh, well, you know, suffering is something which will always be provided when it is required. Sleep well. I will call you at five.”
At the end of the steamboat’s river road there is a leper colony, which Querry visits. He and the doctor form a friendship. Day after day he watches the doctor work.
Doctor Colin ran his fingers over the diseased skin and made his notes almost mechanically. The notes had small value, but his fingers, he knew, gave the patients comfort: they realized they were not untouchable. Now that a cure had been found for the physical disease, he had always to remember that leprosy remained a psychological problem.
Which was not simple. Nothing psychological was ever simple. Still, Graham Greene knew enough to seek darkness rather than clarity. Clarity never lasted, and darkness did. And in the meantime, babies were born and mothers fed them, whether they had leprosy or not. And that was simple enough.
A baby began to cry and immediately like dogs, all the babies around the dispensary started to howl together. “Henri,” Doctor Colin called, and his young African aide rapped out a phrase in his native tongue: “Babies to the breast!” And instantaneously, peace returned.
Today like every day will bring other conversation and various explorations, usually leaning somehow into faith. Our respective journeys take us every which way, and then at last we “arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” Babies cry for milk and apples. Sea waves crash all along the shore. Along with T. S. Eliot, the wise poet, my mind listens for the stillness between the waves. That silence is more eloquent than all the rest.
Jesus said to his disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
(Acts 14, Psalm 145, Luke 24, John 14)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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