IT’S ALL BEYOND US
We enter Lent this month. It begins with ashes and ends with Alleluias. It is in some ways the very heart of what our faith is all about. It is a time to think about who we are, where we’ve been, where we are going, and why.
In our age it has become a challenge to understand what “time” means: that human life is a hundred thousand years old, that the earth began its spinning trek hundreds of millions of years ago, that the origin of the universe is cast farther back in the mystery of time than we have zeroes to reckon with. And our moment is but a speck in something beyond comprehension.
Space is equally daunting. Space is the ocean that goes on and on and on. We falter for language to explain it, except that space is large enough to house galaxies of stars more numerous than the sands and each galaxy is vast beyond what we can grasp. The light we glimpse from the nearest galaxy started its shining journey towards us before human history began. Our tiny speck of a planet makes its laps around its little star in the midst of a vastness that makes the mind shudder.
Strangely, it seems even more difficult for us to grasp the significance of human history with all that it reveals to us about the rise and fall of civilizations, with all that it teaches us about ourselves but from which we rarely learn. “Everything changes, everything passes away and is forgotten,” declared an ancient sage. “The nations are as a drop in the bucket,” cries Isaiah. Our American moment follows the “golden ages” of a hundred empires whose traces are now just dust and barely discoverable ruins.
And finally, we come face-to-face with our own personal histories: our birth, our life, our death. And of each of us the Psalmist declares: “Our days are like grass that withers and flies away on the wind… We spend our years as a tale that is told.” Or as the Bard wrote: “…that struts and frets his hour upon the stage; and then is heard no more, it is a tale; told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
How do we contemplate the vastness of all that is and still find some meaning in the place where we stand? How does the rising and setting of our lives make any difference? Why do we sweat and toil, fret and care, ache and groan, or do any of the things that we do? This is the task of our faith, of our spiritual journey; to find our place in the sands of time and the oceans of space; to claim our role in the little cycle that is all life and our life; to forge a relationship with the heart of the vastness. Most people create a little tiny god, cut down to size to fit their needs and their limitations and close their eyes and minds to all the rest.
This Lenten season, I invite you to embrace the challenge of a God that is beyond your comprehension, beyond your understanding, beyond your wildest dreams, and yet blowing through the backdoors of your heart and mind. Our little span of time and space may seem trivial and yet our days can be full of sounding joy and delight beyond our understanding. For our infinite God is in you, and so, likewise are the stars and the galaxies and the long arc of time. Contemplate the mysteries. Open your mind to the incomprehensible. Let the jaw-dropping wonder of it all wash over you. And in those moments the spirit of the God of all that is will rise up within you. This is the reason for our faith and the heart of our spiritual task. Embrace it.
