Heart
/So we do not lose heart.. -2 Corinthians 4:16
It is hard not to lose heart when there are so many discouragements in life and also so many disappointing problems around us in our world. The pandemic has certainly been a challenge, yet seems only to have accelerated the already fomenting problems of political partisanship, gun violence and societal divisions. I could list so many things happening in our our government, our country and our world that seem to be going in extremely challenging directions. We are not living in a time of ease.
Reading the bible, a book that contains writings that span thousands of years, we can see the the world has always gone through cycles of ease and strife, and no one gets to choose which kind of era into which they’ll be born. But what we can also see through bible stories through history is that in all times and places, even in awful times, people of faith still called upon God for help. People of faith chose not to lose heart.
What does that mean? I mean, who doesn’t lose heart in times like this? Could it mean that faithful people need to live in Pollyanna-like denial, shrugging off the worlds struggles as being not all that bad? Does it mean that if we’re faithful enough God won’t give us any more struggles, or that if we’re faithful enough we’ll have the personal ‘power of will’ to feel serene anyway like a superhero zen master saint? How can anyone possibly not lose heart as drought spreads through the west and we’re back to arguing about voting rights in the United States of America?
Yet Paul reminds us nonetheless that as people of faith, we do not lose heart. As a hospital chaplain, I would often pray these words with my sickest patients:
God, may (name) feel you holding her and protecting her, as if this hospital bed were your very arms, cradling and keeping her safe like a loving mother. Help her to know that she is safe here no matter what.
It is a radical thing to claim that we are safe in God’s arms despite our very real pain, fears and worries, or our very real anger at injustice, or even our own mortality. It is a radical thing to proclaim that we will not lose heart in this challenging world. But we do it because we know that in the end, God is all there is and God is sufficient for everything. As people of faith, we have devoted ourselves to sticking close to the big heart of God.
Having faith does not guarantee that our lives will be lives of ease. Our faith assures us, however, that no matter what, we will be - and are - in God’s heart.
